Theatre Babel's Macbeth has so much going for it; it offers a more thrilling and pacier version of the play than the RSC's in Stratford.
Director Graham McLaren's design looks fantastic and begins with a forest of swords that are subsequently raised so they hang over the actors' heads, gleaming dangerously. There is an all-enveloping filmic soundscape (at times to the detriment of the verse speaking) that adds to the atmosphere and the play even smells good - there is a whiff of incense as you arrive.
This production is also full of good ideas. It may be set in the Jacobean era but its images of good and evil, God and the devil, innocence and guilt seem as much drawn from the iconography of the modern horror film as from the 17th century. Perhaps the two are closer than we might imagine.
The witches are small red-caped children and the minor roles of servants, murderer and physician are taken by a single actor, a shadowy sinister figure who haunts Macbeth and makes it seem as if he has the devil constantly at his shoulder. And the way the dead rise up to become the advancing Birnam Wood is spine tingling.
Some of performances, however, are not yet fully developed. Stewart Porter's Banquo, a man who appears to have looked straight into Macbeth's soul and not liked what he has seen, is very strong, very direct. But Rebecca Roger's Lady Macbeth is too mild-mannered and John Kazek as Macbeth swallows too many lines. Give them a few days to settle in, then go.
· Until August 29. Box office: 0131-317 3939.
