Murder comes thick and fast

WE have come to expect violence, real or implied, never very far beneath the surface from Oldham director Matthew Dunster.

Within 30 seconds of the start of this powerful Macbeth, two men are shot dead, another — perhaps two, it all went rather quickly — knifed, and a young girl raped.

Dunster’s Macbeth starts as it means to go on, building violence and tyranny amid occasional pauses for mad reflection, blood-soaked apparitions of kings and comrades, bludgeonings and throat slashing.

Dunster’s ancient Scotland crackles with this sort of casual, brutal murder, and his analogy is to the Balkans — a couple of hired killers speak in Kosovan, a place where war crept into everyday life and made former friends and neighbours turn on each other with unspeakable ferocity.

Macduff’s young son, for example, is drowned in the kitchen sink in front of his mother, whose neck is then broken.

Three little girls seen playing with dolls (two are youthful adults, Rebecca Callard and Naimh Quinn; only one, last night the super Shannon Flynn, is actually a child) double as the Weird Sisters, pop routine-dancing street beggars and general harbingers of doom.

The presence of these girls, with their tattered clothes and battered minds, brings home the production’s point that in wars, the most innocent suffer most.

It’s a powerful, unsettling production and it gets a largely excellent cast: the supporting players, from Robert Gwylim (Duncan) and Christopher Colquhoun (Banquo) to Jason Done’s Macduff and John Stahl as Ross, are very strong.

My main disappointment is the casting of Nicholas Gleaves and Hilary Maclean as the Macbeths.

Gleaves, out of bulky uniform, is tall but thin and lacks an imposing presence, physically and vocally; while Maclean, an otherwise fine actress, sounds a lot like a really nice person putting it on: you want Kate O’Mara being herself, and you get Carol Smillie trying to be mean...