Review: Macbeth, Tobacco Factory

“Full of sound and fury”

For those in the know, Filter’s reinterpretations of Shakespeare’s work can be an anarchic delight but for those coming to them for the first time, as I suspect a deal of this matinée audience for Macbeth might well have been, their approach can prove a little disarming. It does presuppose a solid working knowledge of the play and an affection for the anarchic working practices of the company comes in handy too as the sound desk once again becomes an additional member, working overtime to create the truly unique soundscape of this strangely enchanting world.

I’m going to hold off too much comment about the piece as it would appear to be a bit of a work-in-progress. This is cited as the premiere of the piece here in Bristol with a UK tour coming in the new year and one imagines that changes and development will occur, it does have a rawness to it albeit one that is most appealing. More significantly, it is brimming with huge invention – the witches are brilliantly, the way that dialogue is toyed with brings a new psychological depth to play and it feels utterly contemporary in its different attacks on the main characters.

Oliver Dimsdale’s Macbeth is really disturbingly powerful in his downbeat persona, this is a man on the verge of disintegration from the off, a near-psychosis setting in to visceral effect. And he’s partly driven there by Poppy Miller’s extraordinary Lady Macbeth, equally psychotic but way less introverted as she pushes for the bloody deed to be done even to the point where she’s drawing targets on Duncan in lippy. Solid work too from Victoria Moseley as Banquo and would you look, I’ve already said more than I intended to. Definitely something to watch out for in 2015. 

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