It was always going to be a difficult feat to pull off. Macbeth, in the Corpus Playroom, in an hour and a half. Not an ideal combination. And yet it started so well, with eerie sounds creeping from all three corners of this notoriously difficult space, producing a disorientating effect that provided an excellent introduction for the weird sisters.

So what happened? Were their incantations really so foul, so fiendish, so damned ungodly that they couldn’t be spoken in clear English? It would seem so, their voices lost in the hurly-burly. This was a seemingly insurmountable problem, with sloppy delivery conspiring against the production's players, who are clearly not without talent.

Lawrence Dunn played an extremely agitated Macbeth, but one that lacked any sense of development, leaving the effect of his downfall somewhat unconvincing. Both he and Mattin Biglari, playing Banquo, suffered from being rather too trumpet-tongued, and the overall effect tendied all too often towards bathos; Macbeth’s dagger soliloquy was intoned with all the gravity of a Noel Coward cabaret.

In fact, few of the actors seemed to be particularly adept at sustaining the emotional intensity that this piece requires. Malcolm (Ben Woodford) and Macduff (John Haidar) did manage to create an interesting dynamic, providing the only truly successful relationship in the production. Lady Macbeth (Hannah Kennedy) was also excellent, however, presenting a convincing study in ambition and madness, and supplying a sense of impending calamity that was conspicuously absent elsewhere.

It was undoubtedly an ambitious project, and aspects of the production were well conceived, with minimal lighting used to impressive effect during the culminating fight scene. On the whole, however, it proved to be only partially realised, an admirable interpretation let down by confused delivery and a puzzling take on the play’s central character. “The attempt… confounds us,” cries Lady Macbeth, reminding the audience of the dangers of ambition. Director Verity Jane Clements might have done well to pay her more attention.