MACBETH at the YOUNG VIC (2016) // ANNA MAXWELL MARTIN and JOHN HEFFERNAN star in a "violent, bloody, balletic" stage version of that Scottish play that we don't talk about out loud!

 

MACBETH at the YOUNG VIC theatre, London with Anna Maxwell Martin as a feisty Lady Macbeth and John Heffernan as the tortured and tormented man himself - violent, bloody, balletic, stripped down, shadowy, sad, political and angry. Cast inspired and devious or deliciously depraved in whitewashed, ghostly, witchy and calculating ways. From up in the secretive rafters, so high my head span, and as back to the back as you can be, in perfect pitch black, leaning precariously over a railing - the things happening on stage from this silent viewing gallery looked like the bloody work of a sterilised operating theatre below, mid-fix, going wrong. Dancing erupted between scenes in the light to soothe the tension or to provoke it, while plastic bags got graphically ripped over terrified heads as payback. Ghosts of the past came at us, in a wash of white figures, stuttering back and forth like a tumultuous, tormenting tide. Blood trickled down the stage in a perfectly straight red line towards those in the stalls as the lights dimmed out. It was as if, even as the play ended, the audience were still yearning for blood.

 

 

WORDS: MARK GORDON PALMER

MACBETH @ YOUNG VIC/ January 2016

Direction Carrie Cracknell & Lucy Guerin
Design Lizzie Clachan
Costume Merle Hensel
Light Neil AustinMusic Clark
Sound David McSeveney

With
Nicholas Burns
Mark Ebulué
John Heffernan
Thomasin Gülgeç
Ben Lamb
Ira Mandela Siobhan
Cassie Layton
Anna Maxwell Martin
Ana Beatriz Meireles
Jessie Oshodi
Prasanna Puwanarajah
Clemmie Sveaas