Theatre review: Macbeth (ETT / Lyric Hammersmith)

Déjà vu at the Lyric Hammersmith, which hasn't seen such a burst of European Director's Theatre-style expressionism since the Sean Holmes years, but makes up for it with English Touring Theatre's take on Macbeth: Richard Twyman throws everything except the nudity and the food-fighting (I'd say the kitchen sink but there is one of those) at the story of Scotland emerging from war only for the king to be assassinated and his successor to throw the country into tyranny and chaos. In a production the projections tell us is divided into three parts, Home, Kingdom and Nation, we begin with a very domestic Macbeth in which Lady Macbeth (Lois Chimimba) opens the show in a luxurious but clinical modern apartment, listening to a voice note from her husband.

Theatre review: Grief is the Thing With Feathers

Max Porter’s Grief is the Thing with Feathers is a poetic novel about a man who’s unable to tell the difference between Grief and a duster suddenly left widowed and looking after two young sons; as well as dealing with the grief he also has to figure out how he’s going to organise his family’s life now that the person who did it all is gone, and once all the well-meaning visitors have left. A writer who’s meant to be starting a book on Ted Hughes’ Crow poetry, Hughes’ trickster bird becomes an imaginary friend to both him and his children, guiding them through the process in an erratic, sinister way. Enda Walsh adapts and directs the text for the stage as a vehicle for his regular collaborator Cillian Murphy, who plays the grieving Dad, as well as the Crow. Designer Jamie Vartan has provided a vast, mostly empty flat for Murphy to play out the story in, helped by a lot of projection work from Will Duke.