The last time Macbeth was staged at the RSC’s The Other Place in Stratford-upon-Avon, it was the celebrated 1976 production with Ian McKellen as Macbeth and Judi Dench as Lady M. Dench describes it at some length in her book about Shakespeare, The Man Who Pays The Rent. Of the play itself she writes: “Love it. Beautifully constructed, terrific story … Short, no interval, pub: heaven.”
There is an interval in the current production so we can’t make it to the Dirty Duck quite so early as Dench, McKellen and the rest of those thirsty actors did nigh on 50 years ago but this version is actually set in a pub so perhaps that makes up for it.
I wasn’t sure the gangland Glasgow pub setting added much, although it did remind me of a couple of actual Glasgow pubs I’ve been to. Is it even completely coherent, to have Macbeth as an ambitious Sopranos-style capo, who becomes obsessed with rising through the ranks? Maybe not but nor does it actually matter much because director Daniel Raggett’s interpretation of the Scottish tragedy is a gripping thriller that gathers in brooding intensity as the body count mounts.
The in-the-round stage is a boozer, complete with a bar with beer pumps and optics in one corner. Around its perimeter there are bar tables and seats occupied by some of the audience. This is no craft ale cafe where beer connoisseurs sit around comparing notes on hop varieties. It’s a sticky-floored spit-and-sawdust drinking den used by hard men – and women. Duncan (Gilly Gilchrist) is kingpin of the local mob, and the first pin to fall to the “vaulting ambition” of Macbeth (Sam Heughan), who is egged on by his scheming wife (Lia Williams), This Lady Macbeth wears skinny jeans and applies her lippy during the “Unsex me here” soliloquy. Heughan’s Macbeth is a muscular thug, more hench than any of his henchmen, whose psychopathy is increasingly evident.
The stickiness of the floor in this awful pub isn’t just down to spilled pints of heavy
The production establishes a real sense of squalid evil. Several scenes, set in the late-night stygian gloom of the pub, illuminated only by the watery light of the lager pumps and flickering static of the TVs, are genuinely chilling. The prognosticating witches — a trio of weirdo barflies — are scarily sinister. There are gasps from the audience when Macbeth takes the tiny hand of Macduff’s delightful young child with one hand, and picks up a claw hammer with the other before he leads the youngster into the darkness. The stickiness of the floor in this awful pub isn’t just down to spilled pints of heavy. The suicide of Lady Macbeth, which takes place onstage, is also deeply disturbing, as is Macbeth’s reaction to it. Macduff’s (Alec Newman) response when he hears his family have all been murdered is almost as harrowing as the murders themselves.
Heughan, making his RSC debut, stars in the hugely popular romantic TV drama Outlander and has his own fiercely loyal fans, the “Heughligans”. I suspect a deep love of blank verse is not the only reason for the attendance of some of the Macbeth audience. But Heughan isn’t here because he’s a box office draw, although I’m sure the RSC isn’t complaining. He’s here because, it turns out, he’s a brilliant stage performer. He’s utterly convincing in the role and his delivery of the “Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow” speech is a highlight.
There are lashings of child-murder and tyranny in The Hunger Games too, although the similarities pretty much end there. Macbeth is playing in a tiny studio theatre to audiences of fewer than 200, all sitting within hammer-swinging distance of the actors. If a drop of blood rolls off Banquo’s brow, you can hear it hit the floor. The Hunger Games is staged in a purpose-built facility in London’s Canary Wharf. It feels like a stadium, accommodates 1,200 punters, and has state-of-the-art sound and lighting. There is a huge video screen on the wall at either end of the auditorium. Four separate banks of seats at the corners of the rectangular arena periodically swing outwards to transform the in-the-round stage into a more expansive traverse stage. It’s an impressive set-up.
This is Conor McPherson’s adaptation of the first novel in Suzanne Collins’s best-selling series. It’s set in a dystopian future in which two young people from each of 12 districts ruled by the fascistic Capitol are selected by lottery annually to fight to the death in a contest screened on TV. When Primrose Everdeen is selected as one of the tributes from District 12, her older sister Katniss volunteers to go in her place.
This is a spectacle more than it is a piece of theatre. It’s different to the two other special effects spectaculars inspired by existing IP currently playing in London. Both Harry Potter and the Cursed Child and Stranger Things: The First Shadow are telling new stories set in worlds created by J.K. Rowing and the Duffer Brothers respectively. The Hunger Games is retelling the story of the first novel and film in the franchise. The vast majority of people going to see this will be fans of the films and books and what they want to see are the key beats of the story they know and love imaginatively represented on stage. That’s exactly what they get so, whatever the critics say, and the reviews have been “mixed”, The Hunger Games succeeds on those terms.
For example, the “cornucopia bloodbath” — when tributes desperately fight for weapons and essential supplies at the start of the games — is really well done; a blitz of sound and light and a blur of acrobatic, stylised fighting.
There are pyrotechnics, aerial work, old school theatre trickery and some highly effective dance and stylised movement sequences. Stavros Demetraki as TV host Caesar Flickerman is a scene stealer.
A pre-filmed John Malkovich is meant to be President Snow but seems to be playing John Malkovich, and that only half-heartedly.
In the hugely successful films, Katniss is played by Jennifer Lawrence — one of the biggest, and highest-paid stars in the world. Here it’s Mia Carragher, daughter of former Liverpool and England footballer, Jamie. It’s not a role that gives Carragher much opportunity to show off her subtle acting skills but it does demand incredible energy and athleticism as she spends much of the show running, fighting or climbing. On top of all that, she also narrates. It seems astonishing that she’s a newcomer, making her stage debut and it doesn’t take a weird sister to forecast that she has a great career ahead of her.
Macbeth at www.rsc.org.uk/your-visit/the-other-place runs until 6 December
The Hunger Games at thehungergamesonstage.com runs until 25 October, 2026
