Review of Macbeth Production

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Review of Macbeth Production

On the 28th October 2002, I went to see a production of William Shakespeare’s Macbeth, starring Sean Bean as Macbeth, and directed by Edward Hall. I was looking forward to seeing this particular production, as I am a huge fan of Lord Of the Rings, and was excited about seeing one of the cast on stage, and because of Sean Bean’s performance in the film, I had high expectations of the play.

The play opened with a massive thunder crack that had a large part of the audience (or, at the least our school party) accidentally throwing their sweets over the row in front of them in pure shock. The lights suddenly going out in the auditorium, instead of being gently dimmed, accompanied this thunder. The stage lighting in this play was used very effectively to show different locations on quite a limiting set. The stage was a sort of semi circle shape, and in the centre, there was a circle of metal grills where different coloured light was shone through the floor to create different effects, and the shadows cast by this floor lighting were more sinister and strange than the normal overheads. Green light was shone through for any scenes that were set outdoors, which looked eerie and natural at the same time, which was very effective. As the set had to be adapted to so many different rooms, the use of light was successful, as it was easy to tell apart the different locations (e.g. Macduff’s house, and Macbeth’s castle).

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There was little music used in the production, but the little that there was, was used at the right times to add atmosphere to the scenes. When the witches started singing at the beginning, it was creepy as well as beautiful, which is how the witches were represented throughout the play. It also came across really clearly that they were performing a ritual and it made the scene more interesting. Singing was also used very effectively in the coronation scene, as it removed the need for words, and gave an impression of solemnity and definitely not a happy ending. The ...

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