Written and Directed by Zinnie Harris

Review by Josie Rose

Tickets from £16.00

Being one of the most frequently performed, studied, and loved plays of William Shakespeare, Macbeth is a tale often told. However, Zinnie Harris’ new feminist retelling unravels an original, unique perspective that has long been overshadowed.

As the title role, Macbeth has usually dominated the story. From his reluctance to kill King Duncan to his suffocating paranoia, we learn much about the psychological and political effects of murder and ambition. Lady Macbeth is frequently painted as the manipulative woman behind this disastrous spiral, who herself becomes mad and dies. Seldom do we see this completely transposed and the famous play undone in such a way.   

 The fourth wall remains broken from the play’s outset, as Liz Kettle builds a relationship between the audience and the story through her transcendent character as a narrator, a witch, and a servant. Sometimes, however, it is not entirely clear or explained precisely why this wall needs to be broken. Or why other characters, such as Lady Macbeth, join Kettle in breaking this space towards the later complicated scenes. The sole feminist retelling of the play carries so much power and originality within it that the later calls for ‘assistants’ or stage managers sometimes add confusion. Ultimately, toward the finale, the play leans into so many dramatic devices and script changes that it became in part tricky to follow.  

Nonetheless, Nicole Cooper captures the fire, inner strength, and power of Lady Macbeth while also allowing those sparks of vulnerability to fly through the audience and clutch at our heartstrings in the play’s closing scenes. Accompanied by an equally talented cast, Cooper manages to encapsulate the fierce and sophisticated elements of Shakespeare’s original Lady Macbeth character in the play’s opening so well that we could never expect the scenes that follow. Harris’s writing unravels the plot while highlighting the differences between the two central roles, sometimes by literally trading their relative soliloquies. Adam Best delivers the infamous ‘out damned spot’ speech subtly and truthfully; we see an even greater journey within Macbeth than conceivably in the original play. Emmanuella Cole shines as Lady Macduff/ Mae brilliantly layering the role with humour, fear, and strength at various moments.  

Tom Piper’s stage creates compelling images by utilising mirrors and moving walls, transporting us from place to place, complemented by Lizzie Powell’s slick and misty lighting design. All of the production’s elements tie neatly together to bring the tragic, assertive, and gritty expectations of the story to the audience that the soul of Shakespeare’s play is never lost.  Returning to the Lyceum where it was birthed, Zinnie Harris gives the stage to Lady Macbeth, shining light on crucial themes of womanhood and feminism that will resonate tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow.  

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