Rory Kinnear and Anne-Marie Duff star as the Macbeths in this new production directed by Rufus Norris at the National Theatre until 23 June. But what have the critics had to say about it?
‘Somehow, I’m not quite buying it’: MACBETH – National Theatre ★★★
Yet somehow, I’m not quite buying it. We are used to gore and nasty things hung on trees and lots beheadings, ever since the technology for reproducing actors’ heads improved. Fine. But unlike the Hytner Othello – set in a modern army camp – or his Hamlet in a recognizable police-state, the misery-world evoked here gives no sense that there ever were nobilities to be breached by the Macbeths. It’s just chaos, and you expect no better.