Macbeth
This review is from the Donmar Warehouse, December 2023. ‘Macbeth’ will transfer to the Harold Pinter Theatre in October 2024 with David Tennant and Cush Jumbo returning.
I wouldn’t quite say David Tennant has been upstaged by a pair of headphones. But as the two-time Doctor regenerates into Shakespeare’s murderous Scottish monarch, you can’t seriously attend the Donmar’s new production of ‘Macbeth’ and say that Tennant – or for that matter big name co-star Cush Jumbo – feels like the defining element of Max Webster’s production.
Instead that’s the binaural sound design by Gareth Fry that requires all audience members to wear headphones throughout, an unusual and somewhat distracting experience, or at least until you acclimatise.
In essence, the use of headphones achieves two things.
One, it allows a constant stream of 3D sound to be relayed to your ears: the screeches of birds, music from musicians in the mic-ed up glass chamber at the back of Rosanna Vize’s stark, monochrome set, and most impressively a ‘three sisters’ who are wholly physically absent, just disembodied voices whose location we feel we can ‘see’ thanks to the pinpoint design.
And two, it allows the actors to talk, not project, using casual or even quiet registers that would normally never work on stage - it was geekily fascinating to take the headpieces off now and again and see exactly how low a volume some of the dialogue was.
I’m going to be honest, for about half an hour I hated it, or was at least ve
