Macbeth

One of Shakespeare’s darkest and most powerful tragedies, Macbeth was first performed at the beginning of the seventeenth century and has had countless adaptations since, some major productions with Hollywood stars, a Bollywood version and some of a much smaller scale.

There are a lot of versions of all Shakespeare’s plays around at the moment, many of which attempt to bring something new to the table but fail miserably, others remain traditional. This Macbeth, currently playing at Hampstead’s very quaint Duke of Hamilton (a theatre within a pub), doesn’t even attempt to modernise the play and thank goodness for that.

An eerily small space, the theatre holds around 50 people and has bags of character. The stage and set are non-existent, rather the actors work around the audience, and perform in and out of a backstage area and through a very old looking archway that makes the production seem all the more authentic. The costumes are in keeping with the period and the props are at a bare minimum with a few swords, celebratory objects such as wine goblets for the banquet scene and a witch’s cauldron (goes without saying) but the small scale here adds to the general feel of the piece and the quality of acting substitutes ten-fold.

Hayley Riby offers an honest and intense portrayal of the over-powering and doomed Lady Macbeth. She’s not as terrifying as other actresses who have played the character; however the evil and manipulative intent is there in her eyes, it’s there in every movement and utterance, casting a dark shadow over everyone around her. Riby was born to play this infamous role; she looks the part and is confident in a language that can be difficult to grasp, as well the desperation required of her.

Both Riby and Kevin Gunn’s MacDuff demonstrate that, despite a production being stripped to within an inch of its life and seemingly being an amateur affair, it can still boast some incredible talent. Gunn’s emotions when MacDuff discovers the fate of his family are outrageous. He ensures that every single person’s eyes are on him as he bleeds heartbreak, pleading that the terrible news isn’t true. What strikes me here is how real his reactions are… It is so easy to overact this scene but he does it so genuinely and cripplingly that you start to feel as though it is your torment. The scene which sees Lady MacDuff (Izzy Jewson) and her child murdered is traumatic and, given the incredibly little space the actors have to work with, it is also impressive.

The rest of the cast are good enough. Anthony Cord’s Macbeth is decent, though there are times when it is difficult to connect with the character and any empathy for him isn’t easy to grasp. The three witches (Izzy Jewson, Louise Nicolson and Toniah Rue) perhaps aren’t evil enough, though they too use the space wisely.

This is a good performance in a very isolated theatre with stand-out performances from Hayley Riby and Kevin Gunn. If they aren’t in the National by next year then I fear for the theatre industry and what it hasn’t discovered, for these two are gold.

 Macbeth is playing the Duke of Hamilton until Saturday 5 October. For more information and tickets, see the Duke of Hamilton website.