The Guardian, with trooping colors
I did not expect (but secretly hoped for) this, from what probably is one of the most intellectual, left-leaning /Labour British daily newspaper, where The Times is notoriously right-leaning/Conservative. A very influential review, especially considering the current social and political state of play:
[Source: https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2025/oct/22/macbeth-review-daniel-raggett-stratford-rsc - posted October 22, 2025]
Macbeth review – a terrifying lock-in with bloodied, boozed-up gangsters
The Other Place, Stratford-upon-Avon Daniel Raggett’s audacious RSC production sets the play in a Glaswegian pub full of thugs and has a Landlady Macbeth running the show
Mark Lawson
Wed 22 Oct 2025 13.17 BST
Audiences arriving to find the RSC’s studio stage fitted out with bar stools may worry they have accidentally booked for Conor McPherson’s The Weir or Roddy Doyle’s Two Pints, plays set in Irish pubs.
This one, though, is Scottish and run by Macbeth, a Glaswegian gangster, and his wife who might be called, in this reading, Landlady Macbeth. The hostelry is unnamed, though we might guess the King’s Head as the action of Shakespeare’s tragedy is largely unchanged by relocation. Duncan, a camel-coated drug kingpin with a cheek scar like chain mail, stays in one of the rooms available but wouldn’t post a good review on TripAdvisor.
Classical purists might react to this ale-house version by wondering what else the RSC couldn’t be trusted to organise in a brewery. But having concluded after a Macbeth crawl in 2023 – seeing five productions in quick succession – that there was probably no new way of doing the play, Daniel Raggett’s audacious staging proved me wrong.
The text adapts enjoyably well to a drinking den. When Banquo asks, “Give us a light there!”, the landlady chucks him a disposable Bic. Wielding flick knives, the thugs still call them “swords” but that – and the tendency to address each other as kings and princes feels reasonably within the grandiose rhetoric of gangsters. Banquo’s ghost ambushes a fish-and-chip wake for Duncan.
Textual trimming is consistently intelligent. Several minor characters – including Old Man and two Doctors – are combined in a single Catholic priest, justified by the text’s use of the honorific “father” for seniors, and also adding a background element of Celtic sectarianism. Christopher Patrick Nolan plays this confessor to killers with searing creepiness.
The biggest challenge is the sinister sisters as, even for those who have had a few, boozers don’t obviously (beyond The Weir) involve the supernatural. Raggett reimagines the weird trio as tough, judgmental table-sharing tipplers who make the problematic “Hecate” haunting scenes into a sort of seance during a lock-in. This is genuinely scary as is the whole staging – played fast with alarming sudden blackouts. The context of gangland turf wars creates a terrible and tangible jeopardy once Macbeth has killed the big man.
Initially risking seeming more like the petty crook Macheath (in the Beggar’s/ Threepenny Operas), Sam Heughan achieves full tragic weight, especially in the soliloquies, with “Tomorrow and tomorrow” daringly staged as a duet with a dead character. Lia Williams’ revelatory Lady Macbeth makes the verse vernacular, a line such as “here’s the smell of the blood still” sounding as modern as the Pinter and Mamet in which she previously excelled. Avoiding the stereotypical scold, she is clearly the brains of the relationship. And, without adding or rewriting speech, her role is also expanded through four additional silent scenes, deeply painful, animating the anguish of a woman who lost a child.
The ubiquity of Macbeth stagings can risk the play seeming small beer but this is vintage scotch.
At the Other Place, Stratford-upon-Avon, until 6 December
***
Sorry, not sorry for duplicating @bat-cat-reader's heroic share, among The Stage's two rather reserved, but on the cusp of negative, reviews.
For me, this is one of the top three reviews we have seen until now, and certainly the most favorable.
Make no mistake: while S apparently is not front and center, the applause is genuine. Mark Lawson knows exactly what the traffic of that stage was about. And his reference to Brecht's Beggars Opera, that immensely pleases me, means S totally owned his game and gave the necessary gravitas to his character, in a rather unconventional approach:
As expected, The Guardian's critic was sensitive to that alienation/distancing effect I was telling you about a short while ago (https://sgiandubh.tumblr.com/post/797064960886931456/verfremdungseffekt - posted October 11, 2025), because Brecht's epic theatre, which inspired Daniel Raggett's vision, falls perfectly in line with The Guardian's own social, cultural and political values. So before this fandom's Mrs. Nobodies condescendingly pat Mr. Lawson's head, how about this more balanced POV?
Mr. Lawson is an excellent theatre critic, who should not be commended just because he gave this show S a 5/5 review - he shared his own judgement and he did it also taking into consideration the newspaper's readers own leanings. He is as professional and as exactingly meticulous as all the other theatre critics, who chose to be more nuanced, as far as S's performance is concerned. They did so primarily because unanimous reviews do not exist (or if they do, they are either boring or paid for). And also because both their own and their readers' (cultural, social and political) leanings are sensibly different.
This is nothing personal about those less glowing reviews. It's business as usual and those who are perhaps less familiar with what is now going on across the pond should not take it as such.
I am still waiting for some major media outlets' verdict and will probably comment on some of it. Overall, I think what we saw until now is positive and potentially even promising. Kudos for all that hard work, really. Many poked fun at my supposed naivete, when I shared here (a long, long time ago) that I saw great things, as far as S's acting skills are concerned - I just wanted to sound encouraging, considering what a dreadful cynic I am, in real life. I could (naively) hope they are less vocal now, but that is not taking into account this fandom's horrendous, opportunistic duplicity.
