The Guardian 9 February 2023

To summon up witches is to play with fire. Could the same be true about summoning up a dead playwright? That is what writer/director Zinnie Harris does in her audacious conjuring of Shakespeare’s Macbeth. It is not so much a revival as an exhumation, one in which she dares to speculate what the playwright might have done had he been true to his own instincts.

For this is a tragedy in which it is not Lady Macbeth but her husband who is mentally unbalanced by the couple’s murderous path to power. Now, Macbeth is the one who, having been told he will sleep no more, becomes ever more delusional. The man who thinks he sees the ghost of Banquo is the same man who goes on to cry, “out damned spot”. [READ MORE]

By Mark Fisher

MARK FISHER is a freelance theatre critic and feature writer based in Edinburgh and has written about theatre in Scotland since the late-1980s. He is a theatre critic for The Guardian, a former editor of The List magazine and a frequent contributor to the Scotsman and other publications. He is the co-editor of the play anthology Made in Scotland (1995), and the author of The Edinburgh Fringe Survival Guide (2012) and How to Write About Theatre (2015) – all Bloomsbury Methuen Drama. He is also the editor of The XTC Bumper Book of Fun for Boys and Girls and What Do You Call That Noise? An XTC Discovery Book (both Mark Fisher Ltd).