reviews: Macbeth

The huge success of Teatr Buiro Podrozy's devastating war-piece Carmen Funebre last year whetted the popular appetite for Polish theatrical exports. Teatr Ludowy's Macbeth, touted as the most likely pretender to the Funebre throne, shares a visually explicit menace with that show but, in the event, has none of its visceral impact. Power-cut theatre would perhaps best describe Jerzy Stuhr's light-starved production. Most of the time the actors are obscured in the gloom, Macbeth's face pinpointed in the vast rectangular space by a hand-held torch during the soliloquies.

The effect is one of febrile introspection, heightened by Stuhr's slashing of the battle scenes and introduction of an atonal soundtrack. Without the language barrier, the understated approach might have stimulated the audience. Here, it excludes them, something that the overblown witch scenes (all-singing, all-shrieking weird sisters, plus a flying Hecate) exacerbate rather than remedy. There are some redeeming moments - such as Macduff's numb response to the King's murder and a wonderfully grouchy Porter - but the reworked ending, which sees a statuesque Macbeth survive to endure general ridicule, is not one of them.

n Moray House Studios (venue 169). To 26 Aug