Something wicked this way comes… India Farnham pays a visit to the Scottish gentry at the Tobacco Factory Theatres and falls under classic tragedy Macbeth’s timeless spell. Production images by Craig Fuller
Last time I was lucky enough to see Stu McLoughlin perform at the Tobacco Factory Theatres, it was October 2025 and he was wearing a slightly ill-fitting toga and having a showdown with the almighty Zeus and Hira, à la Living Spit’s Too Many Greek Myths. And he was bloody brilliant at it.
This time, however, McLoughlin is dressed in ominous all-black, his tall stature framed in a leather jacket and a dark, hazy room. On his head is a crown. And on his fingers, blood. Welcome to local director Heidi Vaughan’s vision of Shakespeare’s classic tragedy, Macbeth.
Running just over two and a half hours with an interval, Vaughan’s Macbeth is punchy, musical and satisfyingly rowdy, with moments of action (and I do mean action – those swords/sticks/jabby-things are mega) and Shakespearian dialogue (no modernising here) punctuated by pockets of breathy, experimental choreography performed by a ten-man, fully South-West based ensemble. Och aye!
Whilst the jolly Living Spit persona is gone, McLoughlin’s Macbeth isn’t all serious-Scottish-warlord-y. Instead, there’s a gentleness to the Macbeth we meet at the beginning of the play, an easiness, that makes the witches’ prophecies feel tantalisingly possible.
This initial gentleness makes it easy to imagine why our Macbeth might have been drawn to Patrycja Kujawska’s Lady Macbeth, whose cold-blooded performance as the fiercely ambitious counterpart is underscored by her staccato Polish accent. Precise and unrelenting, with a balletic grace, Kujawska’s Lady Macbeth dances around her husband, teasing out the darkness within him, and all too quickly, his charming quiet confidence descends into the delusional egotism that we have come to associate with the play(and, perhaps, America).
Erraticism abounds as McLoughlin’s Macbeth becomes more and more unpredictable. The dinner party scene, where Macbeth thinks he can see Banquo’s ghost, was a particular highlight. At the table, under a singular, pointed, spotlight, Kujawska’s manufactured coolness, motivated by her lethal desire to preserve the Macbeth’s royal reputation, is sabotaged by her husband’s blithering outbursts. In a final attempt to claw back a singular shred of decorum, Kujawska’s Lady Macbeth is left with no choice but to continue blindly on with the whole regal routine. To describe her as a woman at her wits’ end wouldn’t even cut it. It was, in the best possible way, very uncomfortable to watch. And I loved every second.
And the witches! The Wayward Sisters have always been my favourite part of Macbeth, and I’m charmed to report that Vaughan’s cultic take on them warmed my gothic heart under the thunder, wind and rain once again. Vaughan’s witches, whose folky get-up can only be described as what I imagine The Grim Reaper would wear to a Midsommar party, are brought to shimmering life by some wickedly-cool sound design by Alex Lupo & Ian Ross. Moving as a pack, the witches communicate via purring whispers which reverberate and overlap around the room. The effect is so immersive that I caught the girl next to me looking over her shoulder as if to check one hadn’t materialised behind her. And perhaps one had – I didn’t dare look.
More magical than any fortune-telling spell, though, is the genuinely cleansing experience of watching a tragedy. Nothing draws you out of your own world, your own problems, and suspends you in another reality in the same way. It’s the same experience which has drawn audiences back to Macbeth time and time again, and will for centuries more. Aristotle called it catharsis. I call it a Tuesday night at the Tobacco Factory Theatres.
Macbeth is showing at the Tobacco Factory Theatres until 28 March.
