The Daily Telegraph

Saoirse Ronan lends star quality to a nearly brilliant ‘Macbeth’

- Dominic Cavendish CHIEF THEATRE CRITIC

The Tragedy of Macbeth Almeida, London N1 ★★★★★

One of the most admired actresses of her generation, Saoirse Ronan is making her UK stage debut aged 27 in one of the most demanding female roles in the canon: Lady Macbeth, an anti-heroine who’s almost a byword for malignancy. As a result, the demand to see Yaël Farber’s production at the Almeida has been huge; the run has been extended, live-stream performanc­es added, piling on the pressure of expectatio­n.

We know the camera loves Ronan.

She has been garnering accolades and awards, including a Golden Globe, since she broke through in Atonement (2007). Anyone who saw her intellectu­ally zestful Jo in Little Women or as the life-hardened Mary, Queen of Scots will have beheld her star quality and nuanced expressive­ness.

Appearing opposite James Mcardle in the title role, she achieves a similar, spellbindi­ng quality of luminosity and intensity on stage, though her performanc­e indirectly suffers, as others do, from an incrementa­l directoria­l overkill.

Shakespear­e’s shortest tragedy now clocks in at three hours. Farber is too ingenious to give us a dull minute, but in the second half she indulges in too many slow ones, further draining the evening’s nightmaris­h vitality by sending water flying towards the front-row in the battle scenes.

Such expansive gestures would better suit an epic space. It’s the first half ’s intimacy and inexorable logic that brings out the best in Farber’s beautifull­y lit staging, which fills the auditorium with eerie breathing, strange sounds, pulse-quickening beats and mournful live cello, and combines brute medievalis­m with gun-toting modernity.

There’s almost something sweetly girlish about Ronan’s Irish-accented, white-jump-suited Lady M initially. She’s enthralled to read of her husband’s promotion to Thane of Cawdor, confirming the prophecy of the wyrd sisters – an imposingly impassive, ever-watchful trio of androgynou­s, similarly attired women.

It’s as if she has to tell her face to become sterner, nastier, colder as she implores higher powers to fill her with “direst cruelty”. The line “unsex me here” carries an irony. Whether enfolding her legs round Mcardle’s rugged Scottish warrior as he enters, or nuzzling him in breathy proximity as they urge each other on, their power-grab contains an urge to be bound together, carnally, and bring forth a dynasty.

After Macbeth falls apart in the wake of Duncan’s murder, going berserk during the ghostly appearance of Banquo (Ross Anderson), Farber depicts Ronan disappoint­ed, remote, shoving away his reconcilia­tory hand – this is an ordinary couple seduced by the phantasm of a “better” life and broken by it.

There are copious flourishes of invention. William Gaunt’s Duncan, frail in a wheelchair, assisted by an oxygen-cylinder, brings a rare lucidity to the early scenes. Ronan’s Lady M here bears witness to the gruesomely staged murder of Macduff ’s wife and children, lending added urgency to her feverish hand-washing. But the action gets swamped by the painstakin­g approach. While Mcardle impresses as a man who resolves to murder but finds himself unequal to the aftermath, his anguish manifests itself in too much old-school roaring.

The evening brilliantl­y concludes by replaying its opening scene, in which the company slow-assemble in a walking-dead trance, as if the nightmare is on a loop. A qualified triumph, then, but I can’t wait to see what Ronan – and indeed Farber too – does next.

Until November 27. Tickets: 020 7359 4404; almeida.co.uk

 ?? ?? Just an ordinary couple: Saoirse Ronan and James Mcardle show the Macbeths as being seduced by the phantasm of a ‘better’ life and broken by it
Just an ordinary couple: Saoirse Ronan and James Mcardle show the Macbeths as being seduced by the phantasm of a ‘better’ life and broken by it
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