The Oxford Shakespeare Company excel at atmosphere, relishing the chance to cook up a mood. They do this with particular zing with Shakespeare's comedies - last year's Comedy of Errors was a warm delight - so it is interesting to watch them tackle something darker, even if it is only a measured success.
Chris Pickles' production improves considerably in its later stages. It is a struggle to bring the murkiest aspects of the play to life on the sun-kissed lawn of an Oxford college (when the witches cried "and munched and munched and munched", I thought only of the well-heeled picnic-feasters all around me), but it gets easier as dusk falls.
Ross Macdonald's Macbeth didn't quite convince early on, plodding dispassionately through some of the soliloquies, but he became rather impressive as the bloody tyrant later on. The presence of an all-male cast doesn't add much to the production, and it makes Lady Macbeth's "unsex me here" speech oddly unaffecting instead of cleverly ironic.
The scene setting, however, works tremendously well. It is done through chanting and singing, and through the use of percussive instruments and deep blasts of a didgeridoo (you do eventually forget about Rolf Harris). The witches are brilliantly revolting, too, like three crusty eco-warriors after a long protest without access to showers. Their scenes are genuinely spooky without any recourse to dry ice, thanks to a chorus echoing their words off stage.
Other performances are also strong: you root for David Chittenden's Banquo, and feel for Henry Everett's Macduff as he writhes and screams into the night air on hearing that his family have been slain. This is a solid production, with some imaginative touches (watch how Lady Macbeth's make-up changes through the evening), even if it never quite taps into the play's innermost heart of darkness.
· Until August 19. Then at Kew Gardens August 21-28. Box office: 0870 609 2231.
