There are more ways than one to skin a cat. Or to use the imagery of Shakespeare, scorch a snake. Likewise, there are numerous ways to play the ambitious Scottish soldier with daggers in his smile.

But whether it’s down to Michael Nardone’s unshowy performance, a lack of chemistry between the leads and/or director Rufus Norris’s everyman take (in an interview with Neil Cooper from The Herald, Nardone mentioned that he “wanted to give Macbeth a real edge as an honest kind of man”), the opening scenes are emotionally flat.

In fact, it takes until Duncan’s death before the action whips up the same effect on the audience as the weird sisters’ prophesies had on Macbeth, ie “unfix my hair / And make my seated heart knock at my ribs”.

Soliloquies roll off Nardone’s tongue like bricks on a production line: solid, clear cut, at a steady pace, but workmanlike. Adjectives and adverbs mere bridges to the next noun. Poetry bereft. Depths unplumbed. The result of which encapsulated in an overheard comment during the interval, “I’m just not feeling it.”

What is impressive, though, is Rae Smith’s (This House, War Horse) epic set – a long, narrow walkway with a steep incline which sweeps from left to right like the barrel of a tank. The engulfing fog and tattered black drapes, together with Paul Pyant’s eerie lighting design and Orlando Gough and Marc Tritchler’s nightmarish score, replicating the “Now, after a civil war” setting of the programme notes.

Kirsty Besterman as Lady Macbeth is quietly impressive, her journey from fiend-like queen to guilt-ridden psychotic as sudden as it is shocking. Patrick Robinson charms as Banquo, combining a winning mix of warmth and wariness. And the trio of girlish hags, running rings around Macbeth one minute, sliding up and down a pole and out of sight and grasp the next, are thrilling in how they torment and tease. The same, alas, can’t be said about this National Theatre production which is solid but unremarkable.

Peter Callaghan
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