Modernising Shakespeare is a thankless task. Do it well, and there’ll still be people grousing that it isn’t a patch on the original. Do it badly, and the audience will be wishing by the end that an eye-gouging service had been offered during the interval. So it was a wise decision by Sebastian Rex, the writer of Mac-Beth, to instead try to integrate Shakespeare’s words into a new play. It’s a bold attempt by theatre companies Acting Like Mad and Theatrical Niche ltd, which produces a mixed-bag of a play. 

Mac and Beth, played by Rhys Lawton and Avita Jay, are two office typists dreaming of greatness. Enter three witches (Niall Ray, Stacey Norris and Clare Harlow) who suggest that greatness comes to those who have the courage to murder their superiors – be they kings or office bosses. The opening is slick, with the dialogue almost Beckettian in its creation of rootless characters looking for meaning. The witches in Macbeth have been depicted in pretty much every way possible and their interpretation here as malevolent childlike imps, though hardly novel, had potential. However, their continual presence, narrating the play and filling in for all other parts, soon starts to grate. Ray, Norris and Harlow all brought a commendable energy to their performances, but sometimes it spilled out into unnecessary movement and performances which varied wildly in pitch and tone.

Avita Jay as Beth has the best lines in the play, both by Shakespeare and by Rex, and does them full justice. In her lines, Rex’s considerable skill at blending Shakespearean and modern English is most evident, as she urges on Mac with a combination of blank verse and soap-opera taunts. Lawton plays Mac as a man who has given up before he’s even started, a man who didn’t much want to be king, doesn’t much like being king, and isn’t particularly bothered about remaining king.

At the heart of the play there is a lack of tension. The performance is pacy, with efficient use of props and an intelligent use of a stark set made of flickering fluorescent lights. The problem, though, is that the pace is so quick there is no time for the slow, inevitable horror to build. Though the play is billed as being about insomnia, that vivid feverish nausea which haunts long-term insomniacs was nowhere to be seen.

The play ends, fittingly, with the bursting of a balloon. Audience members may well feel similarly deflated, although there are moments of promise in the production.