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.

It's a largely unemotional rendition of the play, but nonetheless incredibly detailed. It is clear Lowden knows every line of the original play and is paraphrasing dialogue as he goes along – thus we are given not only an overview of the plot but a generous dollop of insight into the thought processes of the characters, albeit all in the third person and in modern English.

And the cast, set, costumes, lighting and sound…well, Macbeth is played in this production by a bottle of linseed oil; Banquo by some wood glue; and Lady Macbeth's doctor rather gloriously by a bottle of cough mixture. The set is a gnarled wooden trestle table, and that's it. There's some clear and simple blocking, and repetition of the names of the characters as they ‘enter’ the scene and are returned to their backstage side-tables helps the audience to follow, but really it doesn't need anything more. It's just a good story, told clearly, in measured tones.

Do I recommend it? Yes, as a simple rendition of the story, easy to follow and an imaginative approach to introducing the plot before studying the play in Shakespeare's language, I think I do. It's also great that by 15 November there will be easy access to a one-hour rendition of every one of Shakespeare's plays on YouTube. It's a clever and cheap thing for Forced Entertainment to have mounted in these troubled times, free to consume, and I applaud it for that. I'm not sure, though, how many students would sit through the whole thing.

www.youtube.com/user/ForcedEntertainment