“Macbeth”, Lyric Hammersmith
Jeremy Malies in west London
11 March 2025
“Two sleepy people by dawn’s early light / And too much in love to say goodnight.” Shakespeare might have used a similarly crisp rhyme in a couplet, but the lyrics are by Frank Loesser, and we hear Fats Waller sing the song from a gramophone.
Photo credit: Richard Lakos.
Macbeth (Alex Austin) and Lady M (Lois Chimimba) have convinced me that they are in love long before movement director Rachael Nanyonjo has them take a few tottering waltz steps to Waller during a scene change. It was here I decided that I was enjoying myself and liked how director Richard Twyman has approached this for English Touring Theatre (ETT). The central couple intrigued me to the point of my repeatedly wondering where they could have met. I wanted their backstories.
There might be much bagpipe-playing by Lennox (David Colvin) full of bluesy grace notes, but this is more south London than Scotland. Austin gets across his character’s psychotic relish for inflicting pain (I could see him extracting teeth with pliers) and uses patter you might associate with Mad Frankie Fraser. It’s all logical; Macbeth’s letter describing how the rebellion has been put down comes as a mobile-phone voice message to Lady M that begins, “Alwight, babes?”
I have supp’d full with horrors on concept Shakespeare productions that start with a flashy scene but can’t push through on the central idea. This is an exception. Twyman and Austin reduce Macbeth’s hesitation over murdering Duncan (played by Daniel Hawksford) and the action becomes just gangland doing its business as usual. Anything that would derail the overall approach is trimmed. Perhaps to the detriment of the play, Banquo (Gabriel Akuwudike) is sidelined; we get neither his immediate jealousy after the prophecy about Macbeth nor Macbeth’s anger at the prediction that while he (Macbeth) is to be king, there will be no heirs to take the crown.
Alex Austin and Lois Chimimba.
Photo credit: Richard Lakos.
The supernatural is cut back in general here with fewer charms and prophecies. There is only one witch who is embedded into the action and proves super-creepy. Some of this will be Twyman and other decisions will have been by dramaturg Rikki Henry. Apart from the treatment of Banquo, I liked everything they have done. Many famous speeches are moved about (mainly brought forward) but none of this jarred.
Perhaps it’s the ageing process but actors playing Duncan look increasingly robust to me. Hawksford suggests a strength that would have had the whole castle rattling before he succumbed to assassination. But what I don’t understand is why he should simply rise from a dais, get out of his shroud, and become First Murderer. It’s not simple doubling up, and might confuse a curriculum audience.
Yes, there are props such as Lady M folding a few baby clothes at the start, but I’ve never seen a production that stresses so skilfully the central couple’s recent loss of a child and how it is hurting them. And – through no fault of Chimimba – I can’t remember a production so supportive of the theory that a scene is missing in what has come down to us. Chimimba’s movement and diction (full of her native Glaswegian short vowels and tapped ‘r’s) are subtle and intelligent. And yet the descent into complete madness seems abrupt.
Shakespeare and his stage managers were restricted in what they could do with atmospheric effects, but it’s as though his text contains advice to lighting designers who will come after him: “dark night strangles the travelling lamp”, “The west yet glimmers with some streaks of day”. Lighting designer Azusa Ono taps into all of this as hints of the larger world come in from a huge glass door stage right. At one point, Austin is picked out in black against solid crimson like a religious icon. It teeters on being stylized but works. Characters encroach on the Macbeths’ bathroom which is a main feature, and at times Ono gives this a filmic electric blue. The sink is useful for Lady M’s handwashing scene.
“More pointless Ivo van Hove-inspired live video!” I sighed as three video channels opened up. I was wrong. Projection designer Will Duke achieves something more subtle than that; one (crucially one only) of the three CCTV channels shows the dagger that Macbeth is imagining and later the ghostly vision of Banquo that he thinks he sees at the banquet. I’ve come across nothing like this before. The banquet is unusual (and serves the general trimming and kaleidoscoping) by having the guests as ghosts of murdered characters rather than just courtiers. There is also something of the otherwise overlooked Parade of Kings here.
Prodigy (I don’t say this lightly) Eli Murphy plays Fleance, the Macduff child, and Siward Jnr. Twice we hear his neck bone being cracked! I hope that Murphy (he was the actor on press night but there are of course two other youngsters) puts in multiple invoices for having played so many roles. He had the self-possession and technique to ride on the crest of laughter, calibrating it before he began a new speech. Set design by Basia Bińkowska includes model-railway-sized pine trees which the ethereal Murphy positions on the apron of the stage. Anybody who has seen the play before is reminded of what is coming. Bińkowska’s choice of the glass panelling must have put many in mind of the recent David Tennant/Cush Jumbo Macbeth at the Donmar Warehouse in which a chorus of spectators presses against a similar glass structure.
“Remember the porter” is a line in the original text. I can’t recall if it’s used here, but Sophie Stone is indeed memorable as Porter and subsequently as Ross. Stone makes some use of British Sign Language, and this is reciprocated where appropriate by other characters. Her address to us with house lights up as a comedienne coincides with Austin coming out of character and audience members being invited to sit at the banquet table. Austin even asks us how we are getting on.
This phase struck me as pantomime. I hated it. But Austin’s technique is such that he is soon back into his intimidating villain persona. Stone impresses when conveying the gradual change in loyalty as Ross becomes suspicious of Macbeth and finally flips loyalty when her cousin Lady Macduff is murdered. The production follows a contemporary trend of somewhat softening Lady Macbeth by having her rush to the Macduff castle and issue a warning.
This version must be a nightmare for purists who might consider it a waste of all the great verse. “I have words / That would be howl’d out in the desert air,” says Stone. But I bought into the interpretation early and was seduced. If I were to do it in felt pen, I could draw a moustache on the glass that protects the Mona Lisa. She would still be there for Louvre visitors on the following day. Macbeth is still there for a rigidly academic director with strict ideas as to plot progression and presentation, and I’ll go along to his or her version. Meanwhile, Richard Twyman’s spin on this is a riot.
