Forced Entertainment: Table Top Shakespeare: At Home: Macbeth

When Covid-19 closed all the theatres in the country, Forced Entertainment, Sheffield-based theatre company and recommended practitioner on a number of exam syllabuses, had to work out how to continue its work with none of the usual ways to reach its audience. This performance, live-streamed on the company's YouTube channel on 17 September and still available there for free, was the first of 36 performances of Shakespeare's complete works, each narrated by a member of Forced Entertainment and with a cast of ordinary household objects.

Richard Lowden presents Macbeth, and it's a pretty extraordinary rendition. The entire play is delivered in just under an hour, narrated in Lowden's soothing tones with not an ‘erm’ to be heard – it must be scripted on some level at least – like a very calm and comprehensible children's storytime, but with added murder.