He packs it all into this one, the three witches, the loyal thane turned tyrant king, the murder, a ghost, that wife, the other wife, the wood that walked. It's a busy thing this. It does make you wonder who wears the trousers in the Macbeth family, him or Lady Macbeth. At times, one drives the other and she certainly seems the stronger of the two, but she suffers the side effects as well, with the sleepwalking and the midnight handwashing things going on. I wonder what the story would have been had Macbeth not met the 3 witches, was he prompted to power by their prophesy, or would he have tended that way sooner or later. Either way the play is pretty brutal and one can only hope that not all regime change takes place like this. ( )

You know what they say, Shakespeare wrote 2 types of plays - the one you did at school and all the others. This is one I did at school. I remember a trip to London to see a modernist staging (well, modern for the late 1980s!) with almost no scenery and costume from no particular period. Polonius in a pin stiped suit is the one that I do remember. Listening to it after a gap of a good many years I was struck by how much was familiar - seems I must have paid at least a little bit of attention! There are lots of good lines in here that catch the ear, it rolls off the tongue and ties knots with words. There really is something rotten in the state of Denmark and that pervades the entire play - you can't help feeling from the beginning, with the appearance of the Ghost, that something has gone wrong and it's only going to get worse. ( )

Goodness, this is dark, isn't it? What with the focus on the star cross'd lovers you could be forgiven for thinking it a love story. It might be, but it is a blood drenched one. And it is easy to forget with an adult cast that Juliet is not yet 14 when she is married and kills herself. It might be about teenage infatuation, rather than love, with the mood swinging from great joy to the very depths of despair. The cast of adults seem curiously dense at times and so the body count rises. The only positive I think you can take is that at least it appears that the feud between the two families might be put to an end - although the cynic in me doubts even that.
I listened to this as a radio play with a young Ian McKellen as Romeo - and my does he make a lot of bother about it. It's good to have listened to it, and got another one under my belt, but I'm very glad that my love affairs have never proven as tricksy as this one. ( )