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
-
Saudi Arabia could become an AI focal pointUnder the Radar A state-backed AI project hopes to rival China and the United States
-
What you need to know about last-minute travelThe Week Recommends You can book an awesome trip with a moment’s notice
-
Codeword: October 29, 2025The Week's daily codeword puzzle
-
Book review: ‘Joyride: A Memoir’Feature A journalist’s story of how she chased and accomplished her dreams
-
Art Review: Downtown/Uptown: New York in the EightiesFeature Lévy Gorvy Dayan, New York City, through Dec. 13
-
R&B singer D’AngeloFeature A reclusive visionary who transformed the genre
-
Kiss guitarist Ace FrehleyFeature The rocker who shot fireworks from his guitar
-
Roasted squash and apple soup recipeThe Week Recommends Autumnal soup is full of warming and hearty flavours
-
6 well-crafted log homesFeature Featuring a floor-to-ceiling rock fireplace in Montana and a Tulikivi stove in New York
-
Film reviews: A House of Dynamite, After the Hunt, and It Was Just an AccidentFeature A nuclear missile bears down on a U.S. city, a sexual misconduct allegation rocks an elite university campus, and a victim of government terror pursues vengeance
-
Book reviews: ‘Gertrude Stein: An Afterlife’ and ‘Make Me Commissioner: I Know What’s Wrong With Baseball and How to Fix It’Feature Gertrude Stein’s untold story and Jane Leavy’s playbook on how to save baseball
