Blood, Betrayal, and the Lost Heir: Why This 'Macbeth' Stays With You.

For parents navigating the GCSE Literature grind, this 'Macbeth' is pure gold: layered, unsettling, and packed with meaty analysis.

Max Webster’s 'Macbeth' at the Donmar Warehouse, and now on a silver screen near you, is a tense, stripped-back production that digs deep into Shakespeare’s themes of lineage, power and loss. With David Tennant and Cush Jumbo at the helm, this is a Scottish tragedy dialled up to its most unsettling - one that GCSE students (and their long-suffering parents) will find richly thought-provoking.

Its most thought-provoking choice? A single boy plays Banquo’s son, Fleance (so far, so standard); also the Macbeths’ son (imagined?); plus Macduff’s doomed child and young Siward and Hecate. This keeps the play’s obsession with heirs - both lost and surviving - front and centre, making the Macbeths’ childlessness feel even more like a wound that festers into murder. It seems to be this that haunts the couple more even than the regicide - and we see, as Macbeth does, this child everywhere.

Other directorial decisions of note? There is a psychological depth to how the production handles violence, it is stripped back, and so, somehow, it forces the audience to sit with the weight of the murders. The company (and child again) play the witches. Tennant, all piercing glares and manic energy, dares us to look away - are we complicit? Lady Macbeth speaks down to hell as she calmly asks the ‘murdering ministers’ to realise her ambition. In a play about Kingship we lose the English King. Banquo’s ghost, often a visual highlight of the play with his ‘gory locks’ (sometimes also a dagger sticking out of his head), remains unseen, with only his eerie groans filling the blackout. And, while this last choice adds to the horror, it does risk confusion for audience members unfamiliar with the text - ask your teenager to explain.

That said, the most horrifying moment of the production comes when Tennant’s fatalistic Macbeth cradles the child before snapping his neck and dropping him - a moment that encapsulates both the humanity and brutality of his character. It’s not just a chilling coup de théâtre, but a forceful reminder of what’s at stake in the play: not just power, but the future itself.

I will go again, with my nephew in tow - but beware - next to us was a terrified 13 year old who spent most of his time underneath his coat hood. You have been warned.