Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
Cast: Sean Jones, Warwick Evans, Kaitlin Howard, Tim Lucas, Tracy Spencer-Jones, Lenny Wood, Gillian Hardie, Mary Fogg, Michael Hawkins, Lisle Des Landes, Ethan Holmes, Gareth Llewelyn, Harvey Jameson, Elinor Jones.
There is almost no comparison for many fans and scholars of Shakespeare’s volume of work, aside perhaps the essential Hamlet and arguably the scale of Julius Caesar, nothing can touch the suspense and drama of Macbeth. Perhaps because of its close relationship to the darkness in the soul of the ambitious, the craving of being proclaimed the finest, the best and knowing your fate before it is time, that marks it as a play in which to be immersed within.
It is control over our life, the dark art of political and physiological effects on the ruthless that leads an audience into seeing the blurred line from the early 17th Century written play and the many attitudes of those who seek ever higher office at the expense of everything they once held dear, honour and love –Macbeth serves as a warning, a threat of notice from a pen long since discarded, and we forever owe Shakespeare all for such insight.
Rarely does a part such as the Porter get a look in when critical reviews are formed and digested for public consumption, however, occasionally to go against the immediate type is to deserve such praise and in Lenny Wood’s portrayal as the drunken, unharnessed and unabashed Porter, one is put in mind of James Bolam who performed in the role in 1983 for the B.B.C. Like Mr. Bolam almost 30 years ago, Lenny Wood steals the scene with perfection, his comedy timing that he has honed stands up against one of the leading faces of British television, so much so that it gives the gravitas of the unveiling of the murder of the King that extra dimension; that in death even humour must stand accountable.
It is only to be expected mind that it is to Sean Jones and Tracy Spencer-Jones as Macbeth and his equally complicit and dangerously ambitious wife that all eyes turn to, the comfort of understanding the very nature of their combined weakness is one that is eagerly awaited, the fall of their humanity and honour a place in which all audiences wish to see performed without fault, without exception. It is to both these sterling actors that that the play grips down on the audience’s reaction, on their sense of what they believe the two character’s represent, and twist the knife in further to produce madness, a fear so willingly let loose and one that is enough to convince the audience of the darkness that comes with such an act of regicide and murder.
A timeless piece of theatre given the roar that it requires to stand out on stage, for Director and Producer Daniel Taylor it represents a growing belief that Shakespeare can be brought to the stages away from Stratford and London and be given free reign to thrill and captivate an audience; effective, valuable, striking, Macbeth is a cut above the rest.
Ian D. Hall