MACBETH at the TRON GLASGOW

In this timely version director Rachel O'Riordan states "For me the play has something of the thriller about it.It is fast paced and actions and consequences rush into each other at breath-taking pace.It is this sense of history in a world out of balance which makes for an exciting audience experience..reflecting Shakespeares own times , the union and scotlands identity is under question again."
Two vital changes from the normal stagings are , like Shakespeares time , the witches are played by males , an effect that internalises ( hence secularising) the thinking of actioned strategy of the protagonist rather than him being led by fates on a path from which he cannot shrink even if he wanted too, it is no irony that the actors playing the three witches also turn out to double up as Macbeths three principle advisers.The other is the youngness of the the wife ( again taking away from the "traditional" stagings which suggest she is the one who leads an unwilling partner on a path of no return.Both this "innovations" are as the original audience in Shakespeares time would have saw and understood the dynamics of the action.
This way of returning to the future gives added weight to real metaphors and essence of the play as theatregoers of the time would have "understood" the story which is not about Scotland but rather as near as Elizabethan theatre goes come to raging against The founders of the Tudor persecution and what they though of the Lady Macbeth in their midst.This is brought into sharper relief with Tom Paulins assertion Shakespeare had sympathy , if not was, for the Catholics.

This review from the Scotsman , the reviewer does miss the point that Lady Macbeth is a young bride with only limited influence in a production which looks to make Policy and not Individuals master and destroyer of Fate.

"Yet for all these fascinating hints and possibilities, this Macbeth never quite seems to gain a persuasive sense of direction. Crerar somehow ends up delivering Lady Macbeth’s mighty poetry with the vocal tone and body-language of an exasperated girlfriend in an office comedy."

Mark Brown , on the other hand, is far more astute and mature in his review in the Telegraph

"The youth of Lady Macbeth is crucial here – as O’Riordan points out, she would, in medieval Scotland, have been a young teenager when she married. Playing to her tender years, as Leila Crerar does beautifully, transforms the drama in an extraordinary way."