A drum, a drum, Macbeth doth plumb

First appeared: Evening Star, Ipswich, March 19, 2004

Macbeth, by William Shakespeare
Mercury Theatre Company, Colchester Mercury until April 3

FROM the moment the lights dim and a shining river of blood red illuminates the stage from below, you know you are in for a visual treat.

The first menacing notes announce that the music will be good too.

Sadly, however, the design is just about the best thing about this rather leaden Macbeth.

The stark, simple set is effective, the costumes mostly good and the make-up - especially in the crucial set-piece of the banquet scene with Banquo's bloodied ghost - first-rate.

There are plus points in the acting. Timothy Mitchell is fine as Malcolm and Roger Delves-Broughton does a nice comic turn as the porter.

It is not the fault of the actresses playing the witches that their work to build mystery and menace is turned to inadvertent comedy by the bizarre decision to cast a bearded man on stilts as the witch goddess Hecate.

Best of all, though, is Katy Stephens as Lady Macbeth. She combines intelligence and intensity and is always riveting to watch.

Her first appearance with Macbeth, charged with sexuality, and her final sleepwalking madness, are by far the best scenes in the play.

Unfortunately, whenever he's out of her company, Victor Gardener's Macbeth reverts to type. He looks great, and he knows it.

He doesn't so much act as pose, striking a bold attitude at the front of the stage and delivering his lines as if from an autocue. He seems to have given less attention to the development of his character than to how he looks with his top off.

A Macbeth with a weak title character is never going to work, and gives a serious problem to the rest of the cast if they are not to unbalance the production.

The result is a rather low-key, shuffling affair that falls a long way short of the Mercury company's usual very high standard.