Shakespeare's Globe: Macbeth

The Globe's production of Macbeth is a 90-minute cut of the play designed for school students. Although short, this production doesn't miss out a detail of the plot. The audience was made up of school students who did not fail to get involved, they were very loud and excited which added to the atmosphere of the play and was extremely authentic because it shows how the audience would have behaved in Shakespeare's time. When Lady Macbeth entered pregnant and it appeared that Macbeth didn't know because he had been away at war, the audience was really touched, however when Macbeth later aggressively lunged at his wife, the audience were horrified and started shouting at him.

Georgia Lowe's design was simple but effective. Flags were used to indicate who was king, with Duncan's flags ripped down and new ones put up for Macbeth, including the audience being ordered to throw down the new flags from the auditorium. Flags also featured in the costume design, at the beginning of the play, all characters wore a Scottish flag on their shoulders, however closer to the end, many changed to English flags as they joined Malcolm's side. The composer, Jon McLeod, used a small band made up of trombone, bass trombone and percussion. The military sounds of these intstruments suited the play well because most of the main characters were soldiers.

Macbeth, played by Ekow Quartey, was very convincing. His confusion and bad decision-making happened so quickly as he grew apart from Lady Macbeth. The director, Cressida Brown, made some very bold decisions, for example by making Lady Macbeth pregnant she added to the audience's sympathy: maybe her ambition for Macbeth to be king was instead ambition for her unborn child to be a ruler. The sympathy is increased in the audience as Lady Macbeth is the person who warns Lady Macduff that danger is coming, before she appears to go mad because she had a miscarriage.

Malcolm was played by Aidan Cheng like a schoolboy – this was impactful because it made it seem like he was quite ignorant of what was going on. It made the audience think that he wouldn't be a good king because he was too young, and perhaps Macbeth would do a better job. Brown tried to portray the idea that neither Macbeth nor Malcolm would be fit for king because Macbeth kills people and is a bit crazy, but Malcolm is too young and ignorant to rule: he demonstrates this by wearing an English flag at the end of the play as if he has given the English control over his country.