Macbeth, Donmar Warehouse review ★★★★★

It’s Macbeth with David Tennant, Cush Jumbo and… headphones. But before you cry ‘gimmick!’ on this new Donmar Warehouse production that has its audience listen to the whole thing through a headset, what director Max Webster pulls off is actually brilliant. In channelling whispered prophecies and the ominous flapping of birds’ wings directly into our ears, the madness that takes over Macbeth is very much ours too, and the story unfolds like an urgent, spiralling psychological thriller.

The headphones could easily have set a barrier between audience and action. But through Rosanna Vize’s design, that places the show’s watchful ensemble-cum-folk-band in a glass-walled soundbox at the back of the stage, there’s never any question this is live art. Sure, remove your headphones to check that Tennant and co are really audible, but don’t leave them off for long, because Alasdair Macrae’s music and Gareth Fry’s sound design, transmitted from said soundbox to headphones, should share the lead credits.

Cal MacAninch and David Tennant in Macbeth at the Donmar Warehouse. Photo: Marc Brenner

Webster’s production is very much Macbeth as the ‘Scottish Play’, with the whole cast, save for English-sounding Jumbo, sporting Scots accents. Through Vize’s steely colour palette, it’s slick and stylish too. Set in an undefinable period, it sees the cast roam about a polished stone stage in sexy grey turtlenecks, black kilts and Chelsea boots. Tennant’s even got his hair pushed back with a Beckham-esque headband – an effeminate touch eerily at odds with the monster he becomes.

It’s definitely ‘he’, rather than ‘they’, who is guilty in Webster’s take. Dressed like a vision of innocence in head-to-toe white, Jumbo’s Lady Macbeth is about as good-girl-with-bad-guy interpretation as we’re likely to see. If anything, it’s a bit of a raw deal for Jumbo. She plays the part just right, with nervousness peeping through a thick skin, but given the nuanced, mesmerising turn she delivered as the lead in Greg Hersov’s Hamlet, here, she’s underused. It’s all about Tennant’s wide-eyed Macbeth, a man on a murderous mission and a complete narcissist, chillingly unremorseful to the end. In fact, for this reviewer, the chief niggle is that we don’t get a sense of the Macbeths as a couple.

Annie Grace, Benny Young and Cush Jumbo in Macbeth at the Donmar Warehouse. Photo: Marc Brenner

Happily, it couldn’t be further from the over-pronounced, shouty Shakespeare we still see so often. After the Wayward Sisters – reduced to sinister, ethereal voices in our ears – deliver their doom-filled prophecy, Tennant’s Macbeth and Cal MacAninch’s Banquo laugh it off in barely more than a mutter. It’s thanks to the earphones, feeding the dialogue to us while cancelling out any background sound, that it’s all so clear.

The headphones make the deaths particularly disturbing, with the sounds of necks breaking and knives twisting. But they’re at their best when making us complicit in Macbeth’s madness. In the banquet scene, no ghost appears, but through the torrent of sound that briefly fills our ears, we’re forced to side with Macbeth’s paranoia as it's vividly juxtaposed with the rest of the party’s confusion.

The tension of the production is briefly broken for an inspired take on the Porter scene. So often a yawn-inducing interlude, here Jatinder Singh Randhawa’s Porter is a stand-up comic who merrily threatens his audience and laughs at our stupidity for paying to watch a radio drama.

While many of the Donmar’s best productions transfer to larger West End venues, the reliance on tech will make it hard for this Macbeth to scale up from the 250-seater venue. Best catch it here while you can.