Macbeth, Shakespeare’s shortest tragedy, is beaded throughout with some of his most quoted lines, from ‘....something wicked this way comes’ to ‘out, damned spot!’ to ‘tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow…’ and many more. Hearing these brought to life once again by Oxford Theatre Guild’s Production, which runs at St Margaret’s Church this week was a thrill.
The play still has a sustaining grip, although its pacing remains a problem for me. It feels something like a story of the aftermath, a selfish impulse and its ruinous consequences; it’s a steady drop into greed, paranoia and madness.
The church, with its soaring ceilings, ornate architecture and insistent chill, made the perfect backdrop for this dramatic and macabre tale. It blends effectively with Martha Zumack's rich yet unintrusive sound design. However, staging the show ‘in the round’ did not quite succeed - the blocking did not keep in mind that viewers would be three of four sides, and the lines weren’t always spoken loudly enough to fill the large performance space.
As Macbeth, Tom Wilson brought an enigmatic intensity and confidence, and his performance gathered nuance as the show went on. That said, I would have appreciated seeing more of a sense of conflictedness, panic and desperation intermingled with the character’s cold ambition.
The acting was strong across the board, but a few performances truly stood out. As Lady Macbeth, Freyja Madsen delivered an arresting, hugely compelling performance. Lady Macbeth is a character who can become alien in her viciousness, but Madsen keeps the emotions raw and immediate, even as her delivery drips with venom.
Meanwhile, Keith Heddle’s Macduff brought a convincingly weathered gravity to the performance, and in his delivery, a keen understanding of how to communicate Shakespeare to modern audiences. The meaning of the words played out on his features and in his movements, illuminating the flowery language.
Jo Godsal’s Banquo and Beth Burns’ Lady MacDuff were both perfectly pitched and did a lot with their relatively small roles, and Rachel Twyford shone as one of the Weird Sisters, the witches whose prophecy leads to Macbeth’s downfall. Twyford delivered her lines with a genuinely eerie power, which was underpinned by the compelling decision to style the witches as Dis - Northern spirits that sway the fates of rulers.
The costuming was something of a mixed bag, with some brilliant items, such as Lady Macbeth’s green velvet dress that screamed poison and power, and some underdeveloped ones. As hierarchy is such a key theme in the play, it would have been useful to see more variation in the uniforms of men in Macbeth’s court.
Ultimately director Simon Billington and assistant director Jordan Bische have created a thoughtful, elegant take on the bloody, haunting, eminently quotable ‘Scottish Play’.