Macbeth. Wilton’s Music Hall.

The Duke’s Theatre Company’s seven-actor touring production of Macbeth, directed by Robert Shaw Cameron, is The Scottish Play in big, broad, bold brushstrokes: full of sound and fury. Given that most of its summer run is to be delivered in the open air, to compete with the al fresco vagaries of wind, rain, and picnicking, one supposes it has to be.

Those seeking brooding psychological unease, emotional restraint, or a novel interpretation may feel underserved. Nevertheless, there are some striking visual images and boisterous performances to enjoy here. The run at Wilton’s Music Hall is indoors, but Shaw Cameron’s production style suits the venue’s notoriously difficult acoustics.

Marilyn Nnadebe seems to be enjoying herself immensely as Lady Macbeth. In place of the sane, controlled, and ambitious character we typically anticipate early on, she starts the piece in full-on, nutty-as-a-fruitcake mode. There is so much eye-rolling, shoulder-led arm-twisting, and finger-flicking going on late in Act One that one almost expects Nnadebe to break out into a spot of floreo-heavy flamenco. The “unsex me here” speech is delivered with such ferocious chest-beating and breast-grasping that you may fear for the Lady’s health. Large as it is, Nnadebe’s performance is rollickingly good fun, looks great, and the physicality impresses. Of course, if you start full-on bonkers, the challenge lies in charting the character’s path to even greater madness. Hinting at the lady’s late-act vulnerability becomes a tough ask, too.

Still, this Lady Macbeth is quite a piece of work; no wonder Finbar Hayman’s Macbeth fancies her so much. The duo cannot keep their hands off each other from the start. Shaw Cameron picks up on the submissive-dominant dynamic in the relationship by having the lady tug on her husband’s ears as if he were a naughty schoolboy. Then she quite literally grabs him by the balls and squeezes. It is heady stuff.

Initially, Hayman’s loud, high-energy Macbeth appears to be a young, over-promoted thug in a drug gang, clearly out of his depth as raw ambition begins to lead to personal and political ruin. Like Edmund Morris’s Banquo, he is a bully on the rise, a stark contrast to James Lavender’s rural solicitor Duncan. His journey is less about honour transforming into horror and more about the rise and fall of an aspiring Godfather. Nevertheless, Hayman is a charismatic actor and manages to evoke a sense of intricacy in Macbeth’s ongoing internal struggles. Thankfully, he dials the whole thing down to make the most of the disillusionment and despair in the “tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow” passage.

Jessica Curtis’s striking set is a forest of vertical scaffolding poles, smeared in blood red (blood is an ongoing motif in the design) and set over three levels of black wood. Scaffold poles reappear as a shuffling Birnam Wood, knives, clubs, flagpoles (Macbeth’s banner is a red-on-black saltire while Malcolm’s is blue-on-black) and periodically pop in and out of the set.  If this is a gang fight, then it is between two dodgy Glaswegian building firms.

As with the latest Donmar Warehouse production, Curtis’s all-black costume palette consists of military fatigues, overcoats, and kilts. The black-and-red vibe works, but the characters are never differentiated by colour. When Lavender’s recently murdered Duncan, clad in black, reappears shortly thereafter as one of the Lords of Scotland, clad in black, it is hard not to do a double-take.

If Hayman’s Macbeth is the ambitious, brutal gang capo, then William Marr’s Malcolm is the bespectacled, sensible gang accountant trying to track down a VAT fraud. It is a quiet turn that promises sensitivity, but the actor comes close to being drowned out, both literally and metaphorically, by the sheer pitch of the rest of the piece. Indeed, inexplicably, Shaw Cameron, who directs at a ferocious pace, plays a ballad over Malcolm’s final speech that makes the words inaudible.

Shaw Cameron has Jenny Walker’s sparky Lady Macduff confront her nemesis, Lady Macbeth, onstage at one point. The novel skirmish has potential, but it struggles to make a significant impact. Alasdair James McLaughlin delivers a pithy, to-the-point, hard-working Macduff.

There is much to enjoy in this travelling production, and in the end, the big, brash feel to the piece feels almost comforting in its predictability.

Writer: William Shakespeare

Director:  Robert Shaw Cameron