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Narrated by James Marriott
Dead birds fall from the sky with a feathery thump. A soldier fills the stage with smoke. The weird sisters squeeze themselves out of the ground like supernatural toothpaste before an impressive display of writhing. When Reuben Joseph’s Macbeth hears the witches’ explosive prophecy of his imminent kingship, he turns to Anna Russell-Martin’s Banquo and silently mouths: “What the f***?” You can only empathise.
There’s a thin line between a depiction of a world gone mad and a production running wild, and it’s one that the director Wils Wilson’s RSC debut wobbles along precariously. Set in the near-future, this is a Macbeth as overloaded as one of the generators powering this postapocalyptic Scotland. Japanese ghosts, British folk horror, Goyaesque tableaux: there’s always a new association
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