Entertainment & Features
Apr 15, 2024
Last evening, June 9, 2025, the Globe Theatre unveiled a daring revival of Shakespeare’s “Macbeth,” directed by the visionary Anastasia Voss. Departing from traditional Elizabethan staging, Voss transports the play into a quasi-Victorian gothic milieu—steam-powered cauldrons simmer in alcoves, and flickering gaslight casts long shadows across crumbling stone walls. The result: a haunting reimagining that bewitched audiences, drawing both acclaim and spirited debate.
From the outset, Voss's directorial choices arrest attention. The three witches, portrayed by a trio of acrobatic dancers, glide across the stage in synchronized contortions, their skin painted in ashen tones and their eyes glazed like moonlit pools. Their prologue—once whispered incantations—took on emphatic urgency as each chant echoed through reverberating brass trumpets. As the fog machines released swirling mists from concealed vents, one felt entranced; the supernatural aura transcended mere theatrics, evoking visceral dread.
At center stage, Ewan McAllister’s portrayal of Macbeth exhibited a brooding intensity seldom seen. His voice, modulated through a bespoke speaking trumpet, boomed with repressed ambition whenever he confronted visions of the floating dagger. In Act 2, Scene 1, as he soliloquized “Is this a dagger which I see before me,” a mechanical contraption—a tethered brass blade—hovered mid-air, suspended by thin cables manipulated by stagehands cloaked in black. The effect was startling: Macbeth’s grasping hand seemed to slice through mist itself, embodying his psychological unraveling.
Lady Macbeth, enacted with simmering poise by Seraphina Lancaster, delivered the iconic “Out, damned spot!” scene under stark illumination. The stage’s hydraulic floor, raised slowly to mimic convulsions beneath her feet, visually manifested her descent into guilt and madness. Lancaster’s eyes, glinting with feverish desperation, reflected the harsh glare of overhead gas lamps, enhancing each tremor in her trembling hands. When she collapsed, unable to cleanse her hands of imagined blood, the audience sat in stunned silence—few had witnessed such raw vulnerability on the Globe’s storied boards.
Supporting performances added depth to the production’s tapestry. Duncan, reimagined as a benevolent industrialist, wore a tailored velvet frock coat and ascot, underscoring the play’s thematic tension between economic ambition and moral decay. His murder, staged amidst clanging gears and rattling steam pipes, conveyed a sense of mechanical inevitability—as though ambition, once set into motion, could not be halted. Banquo’s ghost, a spectral figure draped in tattered lace and moving with jerky, marionette-like gait, materialized during the banquet scene to elicit collective gasps. Audience members described how his sudden appearance, framed by a projected silhouette behind a flickering pane of glass, felt like a phantom summoned from a fever dream.
Critics have lauded Voss’s integration of steampunk aesthetics with Shakespeare’s poetic language. Literary scholar Dr. Amelia Hart commented: “This production illuminates the play’s exploration of unchecked ambition through a lens of industrial excess. The steam and gears become symbols of a society enthralled by progress yet teetering on moral collapse.” Conversely, purists such as Lord Theodore Chamberlain decried the departure from Elizabethan convention. In his scathing review for The Chronicle’s Letters section, he wrote: “While visually arresting, the mechanized trappings risk overshadowing Shakespeare’s linguistic brilliance. We must ask: does innovation honor the Bard, or distract from him?”
Audience reactions veered widely. Following last night’s performance, the Globe’s courtyard hummed with animated discussions. One attendee, clad in a tailored frock coat and top hat, proclaimed, “This is Shakespeare for a new age—haunting, gritty, and strangely prescient.” Another, a professor of English literature, countered, “I admired the ambition, but found the steampunk gadgetry occasionally overbearing. Yet I concede: the production forced me to reexamine Macbeth’s pursuit of power in a fresh context.”
As the final scene drew to a close—Macbeth’s lifeless body crumpling beneath a cascade of steam and sparks—the audience rose to a standing ovation that echoed through the theater’s timbered rafters. Voss and her cast took their bows, the clang of brass and hiss of steam punctuating applause. Whether one embraces or resists such radical reinterpretation, this revival undeniably cements Voss’s reputation as a director unafraid to challenge conventions, ensuring “Macbeth” remains as relevant and electrifying in 2025 as it was in 1606.
