Peter Viney's Blog

by William Shakespeare
Directed by Daniel Raggett
Set and costume by Anna Reid
Composer Tommy Reilly

Royal Shakespeare Company
The Other Place
Stratford-upon-Avon

Friday 31st October 2025, 19.15

CAST:
Sam Heughan – Macbeth
Lia Williams – Lady Macbeth
Nicholas Karimi- Banquo
Alec Newman – Macduff
Jamie Marie Leary- Lady Macduff
Gilly Gilchrist- Duncan / Siward
Calum Ross- Malcolm
John McLarnon- Ross
Michael Abubaker- porter
Conor McLeod – Angus
Christopher Patrick Nolan – priest
Irene Macdougall- Mag
Alison Peebles – Iza
Elidh Fisher- Nan

Halloween. A good night to see a play with witches. Not that I’m superstitious. By the way, I abhor the reviewer conceit of calling this ‘The Scottish Play.’ That’s an actors backstage thing. It does not extend to studying Macbeth for GCSE nor reviewing it. The actors’ superstition is about SAYING it inside a theatre, not writing it in any case.

The major thing is casting Sam “Jamie Fraser” Heughan as Macbeth. I’m amazed they put it in The Other Place, the third venue, rather than the larger Royal Shakespeare Theatre, although it was the venue for the 1979 Ian McKellen version. Tickets sold very fast to see the star of the Outlander TV series. For those who have missed the 91 episodes, Claire Randall a nurse in 1945 walks through a time warp and ends up in 1743 Scotland where she meets Jamie Fraser. Their adventures in Scotland, France, the Caribbean and America take them up to 1776 over seven seasons. Outlander accounts for the rapid ticket sales and the younger than usual audience profile. It is such a good thing to see a younger audience..

Here’s the odd thing. This Macbeth is modern dress. There’s nothing unusual in that. The majority of productions are modern dress, or 1930s or future dystopias. But Sam Heughan is known for striding around in a kilt waving a claymore. Being bare chested and having sex scenes in most episodes (for good or bad) is also expected of Outlander, I guess that’s what the audience would have preferred.

We found the hotel car park full, because it was the Stratford Literary Festival. Nicola Sturgeon was speaking appartently, so the Scottish mood was set before we got there. We knew it was set in modern, or 1990s, Glasgow, which gave some worries about accent. Shakespeare wouldn’t have dared do Scots in front of James VI of Scotland, who had become James I. The witches theme is said to be to please the king who had written about witchcraft. There is no Scottish trace in the text, though he did indicate Welsh and French accents in other plays. We have seen James McAvoy play Macbeth in incomprehensible Glaswegian.

So here it’s a Glaswegian pub. Funny, when the BBC did the four play Shakespeare Re-told series (2005) their Macbeth was set in a Glaswegian restaurant kitchen. Accent surveys of the UK come out with Glasgow as the hardest accent of all for people from the rest of the UK. Nobody does the full ‘You looking at me, Jimmy?’ But it is a lighter version, so not as difficult as phoning a Glasgow call centre and getting an operator who declines to modify their accent. We still found it hard. Duncan was Scots as a local gangster, but when he was Siward later he switched to London gangster. The priest was light Irish. Lady Macbeth is English.

The programme has notes on Glasgow’s gangland, which competed with London’s Krays. It was at its peak with blood feuds in the 1980s.

It is played in the round, but to us that was an error. One side has the pub bar and steps to upstairs, and in the auditorium downstairs it had only twelve seats on that side. In the upstairs balcony on that side you could see people straining to see crucial scenes like Lady Macbeth’s ‘out damn spot’ and indeed her graphic suicide by hanging. They wouldn’t have seen a thing happening directly under them. It would have worked better on three sides, call it thrust, and utilise the whole fourth side as set. Like the Swan or RST. It’s much easier for actors to play to three sides than four. Why don’t directors watch rehearsals from the awkward seats?

Sam Heughan has enormous physical presence, and tremendous physique. I like to see Macbeth as a powerful warrior. We liked the ‘everything in a pub’ concept. It is high concept indeed. The action never leaves the room. So Lady MacDuff has to come and visit the pub with her daughter. I wondered how they could manage the Burnham Woods moving to Dunsinane, but they make do with a report. I can’t see any other way. No soldiers carrying branches.

Macbeth (Sam Heughan) and (Land) Lady Macbeth (Lia Williams) are the pub landlord and landlady. They wash glasses, clear tables, switch on lights. The pub is the gangsters’ meeting place and headquarters.

The Porter (Michael Abubaker) works there as barman, cellarman, and is also the murderer. He also plays piano for a pub singalong. Pubs had pianos. I think it was traditional as I half-recognized it. I wish the RSC programme credited it.

Duncan (Gilly Gilchrist) is a Glasgow gangster in camel coat. Almost his first act is to have Malcolm (Calum Ross) slit the throat of a blindfolded and tied up prisoner, presumably the traitor Cawdor. This is done as an initiation. Herein starts the problem with the concept. If Duncan is a totally evil gangster, then killing him is no big deal. Pleased to see him gone.

The three witches are three women at the bar. In the second part they really do scary. This is at its peak before Macbeth has his second meeting. When one does grease that’s sweaten from the murderer’s gibbet she wipes sweat from Macbeth before casting it into the pot. Then the oldest witch snogs Macbeth aggressively.

Banquo (Nicholas Karimi), MacDuff (Alec Newman) and Ross (John McLarnon)are tough guys, and all three are very good. At one point Banquo sits smoking a rollup, and by his expression, getting stoned.

An interesting part is the Irish priest (Christopher Patrick Nolan), which indicates that this lot are Celtic supporters, not Rangers supporters. It’s not a place where you wander into the wrong side’s pub, and if they’d had built a set on the steps side, Celtic banners would have been authentic. The priest is a good idea in the context, as he also conducts the wake, does the doctors and picks up other odd lines still in character. He also sinks booze at the bar.

There are many memorable high points, though most of them are action, not text. The break point is unusually earlier, with the murder of Banquo and Fleance fleancing fleeing.

We liked the banquet with the bloody Banquo walking around while our Glasgow gangsters feasted on fish and chips, eaten from the paper. They lead into that from a wake for Duncan with coffin and elaborate flower display spelling his name. The cast sing the marvellous The Parting Glass, then fade down as Macbeth’s speech takes over. There’s dispatching Lady MacDuff with a hammer, then Macbeth walking off with the daughter and the hammer. Chilling.

The willing suspension of disbelief gets stretched very hard on the “English scenes”. They had retained the lines about Malcolm going to England. We meet Siward a London gangster, and Macduff gets the report of the murder of his wife and children. So where are they? We can only assume they popped into the pub when no one was looking.

A clever touch in the context was the ‘parade of kings’ scene. The bloody dead Banquo tossed playing card kings onto the floor.

Then Lady Macbeth hanged herself and dropped in a noose from on high. Macbeth delivered the Tomorrow and tomorrow speech while carrying her in his arms, finishing it on the floor with her dead body. That’s strength, and his outstanding bit in the production. It was well delivered.

On the other hand …

Apart from the playing area, I was extremely critical of the lighting and sound. Much of the time we had the backs of actors heads, in semi-darkness, speaking in strong accents. To make it worse some major scenes such as ‘Is this a dagger’ were played with two overhead white lights with a revolving fan casting a dull flicker. A continual flicker was weird. A play usually gives a strobe light warning for epileptics. I reckon a flicker isn’t different. Yet another thing was that the Other Place was uncomfortably hot. People were fanning themselves with programmes. Yet there were larger real ceiling fans that weren’t moving.

The flicker was irritating enough, but what was Sam Heughan doing? With modern computerised lights you should be able to find the actor. In the past, with fixed lights, and I say this as someone who has spent days rehearsing variety show lights, directors would shout at performers ‘Find the effing light!’ Why with two flickering down spots did he manage to stand and avoid being lit by either of them doing an important speech in the dark? So it’s moody? No, it’s inept. The two white squares are the lights at the top in the interval.

Ah. Sound. They used long blackouts for set changes with ear shattering music. Far too loud, it must have been over permitted decibel levels. It hurt. The first one drove Karen’s hearing aids into overload and they shut down, leaving her coping with accents, backs of heads, too dark to see mouth movements when you could see them, no view of faces or mouths and not particularly good projection, especially from Lia Williams as Lady Macbeth.

Sam Heughan as Macbeth, Lia Williams as Lady Macbeth

We have seen Lia Williams before and she was brilliant, so this was a surprise. We found her Lady Macbeth had none of the sexual tension or manipulative power the role requires. As Sam Heughan’s bare bottom was exposed in many steamy scenes in Outlander, it was surprising that the production eschewed sex. In the round is always a burden for the actor, but you need sexual electricity. It wasn’t there. That’s not her fault. It just wasn’t part of the gangland concept. But then, this is also a Lady Macbeth who saves Fleance by misdirecting the murderers of Banquo. This is a Lady Macbeth who tries to save MacDuff’s daughter. We saw not a guilt-ridden Macbeth forced into action by his wife. In spite of ‘is this a dagger’ this Macbeth always seemed up for violence of his own accord, so why would he feel the guilt of regicide, or subsequent murders? Especially as Duncan was as evil as him.

As I hate criticizing actors I will give Mark Lawson’s opposite view in The Guardian:

 Lia Williams’ revelatory Lady Macbeth makes the verse vernacular, a line such as “here’s the smell of the blood still” sounding as modern as the Pinter and Mamet in which she previously excelled. Avoiding the stereotypical scold, she is clearly the brains of the relationship. And, without adding or rewriting speech, her role is also expanded through four additional silent scenes, deeply painful, animating the anguish of a woman who lost a child.
Mark Lawson, The Guardian

OK, we both disagree with Mr Lawson totally. Whatever, it is not a Lady Macbeth we recognized. I think the character got lost by the concept.

It got a near instant standing ovation. The cast though looked gloomy, none of the ‘we did it’ buzz you see after such strong applause (and the contrast the next day with Cyrano De Bergerac where the cast had that buzz, was notable). If you like your Shakespeare lines intact, and text delivered with clarity, this one is not for you. The concept broke the relationship between the two central roles for us. The lighting and sound was not up to RSC standards. It was misconceived.

The play extremely violent, so much so that Karen described it as ‘depraved.’ It’s a pity. I thought the concept had great potential, but as often, some things fit, some just don’t. Guilt doesn’t fit. So is it actually ‘a tragedy’?

Overal
***

WHAT THE CRITICS SAID

5 star
Mark Lawson, The Guardian *****
Mia, Theatre & Tonic *****

4 star
Domenic Cavendish., The Telegraph ****

3 star?
Dominic Maxwell, The Times ***
Michael Davies, What’s On Stage ***
Dave Fargnoli, The Stage ***

2 star
Raphael Kohn, All That Dazzles **

LINKS ON THIS BLOG

MACBETH
Macbeth – McAvoy 2013, Trafalgar Studio, James McAvoy as Macbeth
Macbeth, RSC 2011 Jonathan Slinger as Macbeth
Macbeth – Tara Arts 2015 (Shakespeare’s Macbeth) on tour, Poole Lighthouse
Macbeth, Young Vic, 2015
Macbeth – Globe 2016, Ray Fearon as Macbeth
Macbeth, RSC 2018, Christopher Ecclestone as Macbeth
Macbeth, National Theatre 2018, Rory Kinnear as Macbeth
Macbeth, Wanamaker Playhouse 2018, Paul Ready as Macbeth
Macbeth, Watermill, 2019. Billy Postlethwaite as Macbeth
Macbeth, Chichester 2019, John Simm as Macbeth
Macbeth, RSC 2023, Reuben Joseph as Macbeth
Macbeth, Globe 2023, Max Bennett as Macbeth
Macbeth, Donmar 2025, David Tennant as Macbeth
Macbeth RSC 2025, Sam Heughan as Macbeth.

DANIEL RAGGETT (Director)
Edward II by Marlowe, RSC 2025
The Vortex by Noël Coward, Chichester 2023

SAMUEL HEUGHAN
Outlander TV
Outlander Series 6 TV

LIA WILLIAMS
The Vortex by Noël Coward, Chichester 2023
Doubt, Chichester 2022 (DIRECTOR)
John Gabriel Borkman, Bridge Theatre, 2022

NICHOLAS KARIMI
Henry VI: Wars of The Roses, RSC 2022 (Warwick)
Henry VI: Rebellion RSC 2022 (Warwick)
Macbeth, National Theatre 2018, (Lennox)
Titus Andronicus, Globe 2014

CHRISTOPHER PATRICK NOLAN
Edward II by Marlowe, RSC 2025