Boy witches: Dermot Canavan, Julian Blundell and Howard Gossington

All-male cast is a little Macduff

MACBETH
Lincoln’s Inn

THE Oxford Shakespeare Company returns to Lincoln’s Inn with an all-male production of Macbeth on the play’s 400th anniversary.
Under the shadow of the stately 15th century Old Hall, on a perfect summer’s evening, with the babble of what felt like an entire campus of Oxford undergraduates piercing the air, the OSC has created an atmosphere befitting their bard.
The OSC has confined the play to its original context. I can handle the parping woodwind and the alien costumes, but an all-male cast is nothing short of absurd.
Lincoln’s Inn has played its part in the literary canon, but as far as Macbeth, or Shakespeare goes the setting is meaningless, serving only to instill a sense of grandeur on proceedings.
Lady Macbeth is supposed to be manly, but actually casting her as a man, Jonathan O’Boyle, misses the point.
Hers and Macbeth’s (Max Digby) early embrace would have been more at home in a Bram Stoker novel.
There is a wealth of talent running through this company, from the well-spoken actors to the veteran director Chris Pickles, and it was sad to see them struggling to cope with what to my mind was a pointless exercise in history.
Surely Shakespeare would have been the first to cast off these constraints had he been writing today.
The porter scene – a witty skit mischievously sandwiched between Duncan’s gory murder and the start of the cover up – was one of the best I’ve seen. The 18th century novelist Thomas De Quincey, who visited many an opium den near Lincoln’s Inn, wrote a short book on the scene and I always look forward to it. Some of the audience were made to look like fools by the mischievous Nicholas Chambers.
The problem is that there is no scope for interpretation, no attempt to make Macbeth relevant. The OSC’s brand of Shakespeare is Ronseal – it does exactly what it says on the tin.
Some will enjoy this return to type and I can almost recommend it – just not for me.

Until Aug 19
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