South African director Yaël Farber has won global acclaim for her dark and “sensuously atmospheric” stagings of works by the likes of Strindberg and Miller, said Dominic Cavendish in The Daily Telegraph.
This eagerly anticipated new Macbeth bears many of her hallmarks: beautiful lighting, an unnerving soundscape, and luxuriously unhurried performances from its stars James McArdle and Saoirse Ronan – the latter making her “spellbinding” British stage debut.
Yet overall, it is only a “qualified triumph”. The action feels swamped by the director’s painstaking approach. It’s as if the lighting, sound and music are being used to “conjure the play’s febrile momentum in lieu of the human drama”, said Arifa Akbar in The Guardian. The play’s “psychological terror” is too slow to materialise – though when it does arrive it is “brute, unrestrained and blood-curdling”.
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
A lack of pace is the key problem, said David Benedict in Variety. Macbeth’s own calculation about the murder of Duncan is often taken as a useful guide to staging Macbeth: “If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well it were done quickly.” Farber “begs to differ”. Macbeth generally clocks in around two hours. This production lasts more than three, owing to an onstage cellist lamenting throughout, a flood – and a “great deal of pausing”. There are “undeniably electrifying” moments, but it all needs to be faster.
Still, the acting is sensational, said Alexandra Pollard in The Independent. These Macbeths are strikingly young – the actors are 32 and 27 – and loving. They kiss, caress, embrace – “turned on by power and each other”. This makes it all the more devastating when Macbeth “turns towards violence”. Ronan mesmerises, and makes Shakespeare’s “beautiful but weighty words easy to understand”.
McArdle is brilliant too – “pathetic and desperate, meek and callous, genu- inely horrified by what he is doing even as he continues to do it”. They are terrific performances – in a bold, brutal, production.
Almeida Theatre, London N1. Until 27 November
-
Taps could run dry in drought-stricken TehranUnder the Radar President warns that unless rationing eases water crisis, citizens may have to evacuate the capital
-
Alaska faces earth-shaking loss as seismic monitoring stations shutterIN THE SPOTLIGHT NOAA cuts have left the western seaboard without a crucial resource to measure, understand and predict tsunamis
-
10 great advent calendars for everyone (including the dog)The Week Recommends Countdown with cocktails, jams and Legos
-
6 homes with fall foliagefeature An autumnal orange Craftsman, a renovated Greek Revival church and an estate with an orchard
-
Bugonia: ‘deranged, extreme and explosively enjoyable’Talking Point Yorgos Lanthimos’ film stars Emma Stone as a CEO who is kidnapped and accused of being an alien
-
The Revolutionists: a ‘superb and monumental’ bookThe Week Recommends Jason Burke ‘epic’ account of the plane hijackings and kidnappings carried out by extremists in the 1970s
-
Film reviews: ‘Bugonia,’ ‘The Mastermind’ and ‘Nouvelle Vague’feature A kidnapped CEO might only appear to be human, an amateurish art heist goes sideways, and Jean-Luc Godard’s ‘Breathless’ gets a lively homage
-
Book reviews: ‘Against the Machine: On the Unmaking of Humanity’ and ‘Nobody’s Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice’feature An examination of humanity in the face of “the Machine” and a posthumous memoir from one of Jeffrey Epstein’s victims, who recently died by suicide
-
The dazzling coral gardens of Raja AmpatThe Week Recommends Region of Indonesia is home to perhaps the planet’s most photogenic archipelago
-
Salted caramel and chocolate tart recipeThe Week Recommends Delicious dessert can be made with any biscuits you fancy
-
6 trailside homes for hikersFeature Featuring a roof deck with skyline views in California and a home with access to private trails in Montana
