Closing Week for Macbeth at the Harold Pinter Theatre - celebrating the kids' final performances
Three young boys (Casper Knopf, Theo Wake, and Raffi Phillips) shared the role of Macduff's son/Fleance/Young Siward - and they were all excellent. On each of the boys' final performances, the cast celebrated them during the curtain call.
Video Sources:
[ Casper Knopf's Instagram ] - from 11 December 2024
[ Theo Wake's Instagram ] - from 13 December 2024
Tony Daddingham's video of the [ final curtain call with Raffi ]
...and also do yourself a favor and watch [ TennantSideburns' footage ] of Casper's final curtain call - because it's adorable.
Macbeth cinema/Donmar recording thoughts (Harold Pinter as my reference). Would love your help with remembering some things
*Spoilers* for the productions if you haven’t seen any version of this one yet and are planning to
Also first of all I loved it, I’m just a perfectionist with some ocd so being critical is in my nature, please do not mistake this for hating
HP was def better than the recording no contest, but it was still good
The blood dripping into the bowl was Cool but I preferred the pitch black for the first encounter with the witches—I think it made the first visual of the actor so much more striking
It really Really frustrated me that they zoomed inside the box. Like in the theatre this part of the production was *SO* fucking 😗👌 effective, because it loomed in the background and looked over the stage, and it lost effectiveness when they zoomed in and filmed from inside the box on individual speakers imo. Like it fell kind of flat where it was so powerful before
The pause/slow-mo to place Macbeth looming and monologuing over Malcolm as Macbeth is leaving was significantly less refined and effective than in the HP performances I saw. Like it still kinda worked but it worked so well when I saw it at HP and it didn’t quite meet that—edit: or maybe it’s because they filmed it from a higher angle so it didn’t have the same looming over effect? Idk but it wasn’t quite as good
So Casper was the only child actor I hadn’t seen, and everyone’s Scottish—but Cush as Lasy Macbeth was, the talk around the production went, the only English person. So I was really excited to get to see Casper but yo I was so distracted by his very southern English accent and a lil disappointed ngl
Was wondering how they were going to make the Porter’s scene work. For some reason I thought it was filmed without an audience. Glad it held tho. Probably wasn’t any Trvmp assassination joke in 2023 which I should’ve thought of before bc I was wondering what they’d do with that
Def preferred the rump slap for the “here you may roast your goose” than what was recorded but eh
Cinema/Donmar version was def more chilling when he switches back from the jokes and into the “I pray you. Remember the Porter.”
Annoyed that the short converstion between the Porter and MacDuff about drunkenness was cut. Was it performed and cut for editing timing for the cinema?
Was Banquo in the box during the dinner scene at the Pinter? I don’t remember him being in the box during that scene in the cinema… pls remind
I think the Lady MacDuff scene was more intense here than at the HP? Remind me other people who saw it, but I thought she was dragged off screaming in the Pinter production? Also I think what the child did was different between the two? Help my memory out 🙏
The scene where he summons the witches I liked way better in the HP version, tho I wish I remembered more details of it beyond the convulsing which was 👌
The David Tennant monologuing to camera didnt jar and bother me like I was afraid it might’ve. I think I still would’ve preferred more wide shots interspersed—especially and definitely where there were things happening in the box at the same time
Bridget Jones must navigate life as a widow and single mother to her two children, with plenty of help from her family and friends. She is about to understand that she still has a life to live, even if its not the one she thought she would have.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Continue reading Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy (2025) Review
TL;DR – In a cup, add a heaped measure of situational comedy, a tablespoon of second-hand embarrassment & a squeeze of authentic charm. Shake it up and pour over the realisation that you are getting older & serve with a garnish of the exploration of life after death.
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 4 out of 5.
Post-Credit Scene – There are items during the credits.Disclosure – I was invited to a press screening…
The Donmar Warehouse production runs until 10 February 2024
'This feels like a Macbeth for the digital age, one perfectly tailored for fans of its star David Tennant. It’s stylish, evocative – and slightly distancing. But never for a moment can you tear your attention away...
When Tennant’s Macbeth appears on Rosanna Vize’s raised white stage, he is washing the blood of battle away. Behind him, like ghosts, the rest of the cast and three musicians line up behind a glass screen, talking quietly. The headphones let us into secrets. Macbeth has only to whisper his darkest thoughts and we are there, with his vaulting ambition, inside his head. As he talks quietly to Banquo, he is surprisingly sinister.
Cush Jumbo’s Lady Macbeth arrives full of sadness, accompanied by a soundtrack of children laughing – the only English woman in a Scottish court, dressed in white rather than the grey tops and black kilts of the others. This is someone who is clearly already almost unhinged by grief, haunted by a child who has died and Jumbo makes her a remarkable combination of steel and softness.
Meeting Tennant’s conversational Macbeth, she provides the driving force towards murder, fierce to his weakness. Yet as they do their bloody deed, she is struggling to convince herself that “the sleeping and the dead are but as pictures”, while Tennant’s Macbeth has already donned the mask of nihilism that propels him deeper and deeper into blood.
Both performances are wonderfully observed, Jumbo finding nuanced depths that are only hinted at, holding the hand of her lost child in the sleepwalking scene for example. Tennant discovers new meanings in familiar lines, playing on a sardonic sense of weariness as Macbeth hurtles towards his doom.
Director Max Webster stages the whole thing with great flair and makes many intriguing interventions. It is clever, for example, to make the boy who plays Fleance (a serious faced Casper Knopf) also play Macduff’s son and Young Siward; in the second two instances, Macbeth slays him, wrapping him in his arms in a distorted fatherly love, literally killing his hopes. The banquet scene benefits hugely from the fact that Tennant is centre stage throughout; we only hear a suggestion of Banquo...
The final image of the dead butcher lying in a pool of his own blood as the world around him suddenly becomes full of colour and life is another example of the production’s technical inventiveness. This is a cool, studied Macbeth, with a clear view of where it’s headed. It didn’t move me, but in its own chilly way, it strikes deep chords.
This is one of those rare shows which fully sold out for its entire run even before press night so it was very much a case of, to quote a di
'...I’ve seen plenty of A-list Macbeths over the years including Derek Jacobi, Roger Allam, Antony Sher and Jonathan Pryce along with dozens of less famous ones but David Tennant blew my socks off. He has an exceptional talent for making every word of Shakespeare’s text sound naturalistic and inclusively modern. I’ve noticed this before but never so much as in this startling, original production.
It will be remembered as “the one with the headphones”. Every seat has a pair with a clear channel to each ear and audience members are told that they won’t be able to hear the show without them. The effect is astonishing. The sound design (Gareth Fry) provides murmurs, cackles, and sinister breathing when the witches are about. There’s a raven which screeches from right to left so convincingly it’s hard not to duck. And it means that the cast doesn’t have to project vocally. You can have real whispers and muttering as well as soliloquies which really sound like thoughts. Tennant’s “Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow” was the most moving I’ve ever heard because it was conversational. And the sound effects at the murder of Lady Macduff are almost unbearable...
Cush Jumbo is both chilling and vulnerable as Lady Macbeth and the chemistry she and Tennant create together is wonderfully rich so the tragedy of that breaking down is desperately painful. Her sleepwalking presents a pitiful figure whose mind has completely blown and I liked the idea of substituting her for Ross before the Macduff murders to create a sense of female solidarity, helpless as it is.
There’s a strong performance from Noof Ousellam as Macduff. When he hears of the killings at Fife his reaction is electrifying although changing “dam” to hen” in “all my pretty chickens and their dam” sounds peculiar. And Casper Knopf did a fine job on press night (he alternates with Raffi Phillips) as Fleance, the McDuff boy and Young Siward. The whole audience winces when Tennant despatches him in the latter role...
This could be a “marmite” production. Some people probably won’t like certain aspects of it but it stands for me as one of the most powerful and interesting takes on the play I’ve ever seen...'
