Devolution has had its setbacks, but God help Scotland if it were ever ruled by this shower. The Macbeth who appears in Ro Theatre of Rotterdam's production hardly seems fit to be a thane, far less a king. He and his wife are fragile, physically unprepossessing and teary-eyed from the outset. If we were to consider Alize Zandwijk's production literally, we would struggle to believe in the couple's regal rise. But this Macbeth is less a piece of dramatic storytelling, more a psychological study of a man losing control. The interpretation has brooding power, but there is a marked lack of blood and thunder, swordplay and scorched earth.
The play is set in some dingy institution, with schoolroom chairs and a crummy communal shower. The characters drift in and out, without autonomy: we see them only as they are refracted through Macbeth's fevered mind. It can feel as if we are watching the play under water.
Zandwijk's Euro-theatre sensibility prizes abstract images over narrative drive. Some are beautiful, not least the mechanical ballet of grief that follows Duncan's death. Some are more problematic, as when Zandwijk illustrates Macbeth's descent into evil by having him paint himself black.
She doesn't play Shakespeare's dramatic events straight: Macbeth doesn't appear to be seeing a dagger, nor his wife a damned spot. Steven van Watermeulen holds the attention as this tortured, ineffectual Macbeth, who acts only when it is easier than not doing so. There are some irreverent touches that puncture the sometimes somnolent atmosphere: Esther Scheldwacht's surgical-robed witch bungs a broomstick between her legs; the Macbeths' banquet descends into drunken misbehaviour.
This is a darkly intense portrait of a man in psychological freefall. But it sacrifices action to atmosphere, as Shakespeare's story splinters into the projections of a febrile mind.
· Ends tonight. Box office: 0131-473 2000.
