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 rest of the sounds used in this production were mainly human sounds, like screams and thunder. These were very piercing and shocking which was chilling.
The actual staging of the play was very simple, with minimal set dressing that was mainly taken on or off stage by members of the cast, as different kinds of furniture were used for the different locations, it didn’t really matter, and was incorporated into the scenes so the set seemed very versatile, without actually being so. The main set on first appearance did not look at all neutral, and it was hard to believe that it could be used for every scene. It was a two levelled, metal-finished construction, which had several entrances on both levels and both sides, and rungs and a ladder leading from the floor to the higher level. At the centre-back of the stage, there was another two-levelled construction. The bottom level was a set of free standing double doors that various characters stormed through at several points in the play, this was very effective, particularly as the cast had mastered storming through without getting hit by the doors as they swung closed again! The top was a kind of tower, where the heads of the defeated were displayed on pikes.
I thought that the casting was very successful, particularly in the case of Lady Macbeth, however I (as a Scot) was disappointed to find that a maximum of two members of the cast were Scottish, and as the rest of the cast had very different accents it didn’t really seem as if the play was actually set in Scotland. Sean Bean was (in my opinion) excellent as Macbeth, (even if our coach almost running him over may not have shown a positive general opinion) and he captured what I had imagined Macbeth would be like almost exactly. Lady Macbeth (played by Samantha Bond) was also very believable in her role. However, the one member of the cast that I thought was slightly presence-less was the Banquo. He was far superior as the ghost of Banquo than he was as the living Banquo, and his silent presence at the side of the stage was frequently very unsettling.
Overall I thoroughly enjoyed this production, and I may well see it again in the future, however one thing that I found to some extent frustrating was the way that the director had merged the present with the past, as it wasn’t accurate, and just seemed out of place. The chronology inexplicably jumps from dark medieval Scotland to what appears to be 20th century soldiers running around with machine guns, storm trooper uniforms, elevators and helicopters which can be a little confusing.