AT last, a production that does justice to Shakespeare’s darkest tragedy.

In the last production before the old Everyman theatre closes to be completely rebuilt and rise like a phoenix in 2013, artistic director Gemma Bodinetz delivers a Macbeth worthy of the name.

With a terrific cast led by David Morrissey as the bloodstained protagonist, this is a sturdy, lucid and terrifying production. The atmosphere conjured by Francis O’Connor’s set depicting a dank, decaying castle lit by sputtering industrial lamps, is palpably evil; the arrival of the three obscenely unpleasant witches sets the tone.

Morrissey moves from vacillating soldier to incarnadined villain with assurance, showing naked fear and paranoia as his murderous acts haunt him throughout. He is immeasurably supported by Julia Ford, bravely stepping in after the mysterious exit of the original Lady Macbeth, Jemma Redgrave,  three weeks before first night.
Her wholesome and innocent appearance give an extra chill to her ruthless determination to help her husband on the way to the throne of Scotland, even if it means a few murders en route.
Around this vortex of evil, the remaining cast circle with dark and dynamic energy, doubling and sometimes trebling their roles.

Ken Bradshaw’s Banquo is a noble brute; so, too, is Matthew Fllynn’s Macduff – whose reaction to the news that his wife and children have been slaughtered is unbearably moving.

Elsewhere, terrific performances surface – Mark Arends’ youthful Malcolm reveals the politically manipulative monarch-in-waiting. And the cadaverous Richard Bremmer is the best Porter I have ever scene – played as an English valet like Max Wall trying to retain his dignity after a skinful.
There is a hurtling sense of pace, fuelled by the prophesises of the witches and Macbeth’s increasing paranoia. Rarely have I been so thrilled and moved by this play. Ford brings a degree of heartbreak to the sleepwalking scene that is unusual, though having the Doctor dressed as an undertaker is a tad de trop.

The atmosphere is so thick with blood that actual bloodletting is kept to a minimum; Lady Macduff is drowned in a pool after her son has his neck broken – a scene that brought a collective gasp from the entire audience. Even the use of a video screen to relay the ghosts and future kings of Scotland is strange – pulled as it is from a pool of water. No wonder the electrics are constantly on the fritz. It’s the business. The bloody business.

IT’S three decades since David Morrissey last trod the boards at the Everyman.

So it’s little surprise his return adds an extra emotional charge to proceedings – this is, of course, the theatre that gave the actor the confidence to embark on what has been a hugely successful career.

Despite an early spell at the RSC, that career has mainly taken him off into television and film. But on the evidence of his confident and at times compelling performance here, maybe he should consider a more regular return to the stage?

His Macbeth is in turns troubled, hopeful, defensive and defiant, a man of feverish- eyed ambition and flashes of insecurity.

Artistic director Gemma Bodinetz and designer Francis O’Connor have forged a dystopian ‘savage future’ set geographically somewhere indistinct, although the flavour of the costumes places it somewhere on a Soviet border.

The dark, clanging metal backdrop, with its multi-storey staircase and shorting lights, evokes the feel of a Cold War bunker from which the ambitious army general plots his next murderous move.

There’s no attempt to shy away from the business end of brutality, with characters dispatched with a sickening crack of the neck here and a beheading there. And yes, who would have thought the old man to have so much blood in him.

This being Macbeth, the production had a run in with bad luck when its original Lady Macbeth, Jemma Redgrave, quit the cast with three weeks until opening night

Her replacement, Julia Ford, has worked with Morrissey before (on TV’s Red Riding) and the pair generate a very watchable rapport as the power-hungry couple who dare each other on to the indefensible.

The charged moment where Macbeth wavers over slaying Richard Bremmer’s avuncular monarch is a prime example.

Ford’s opening solo scene lacks a little conviction, but she grows and matures visibly into her role as the first half unfolds.

And what the pair, indeed the entire cast, also bring to the production is a clarity of story-telling, both in their delivery of Shakespeare’s dialogue and in the action.

There are a number of entertaining supporting performances, from Ken Bradshaw (who also shone in the Unbound series last autumn) as Banquo to the trio of wraith- like ‘weird sisters’ and both Bremmer’s king and comedic porter – Riff Raff meets John le Mesurier.

A Strange Days-style TV screen prophesy scene adds little to proceedings, while the second half lacks the drive of the first.

But overall it’s a prodigal return.

BREATHS were bated in anticipation for this collision of moments in theatrical history – Liverpool Everyman’s final major show, before it closes for demolition this summer, and the return of David Morrissey to the stage where he first discovered his passion, and aptitude, for his craft.

With the weight of a city’s expectation upon her shoulders, director Gemma Bodinetz had charged herself with a task of elephantine proportions – to present a play that pays tribute to the theatre’s great past while raising the bar for its future.

Has she succeeded? Has she ever.

It took just a few seconds to establish a disconcerting atmosphere that built apace until Macbeth’s foul murder of Duncan and the conveyor belt of slaughterings that follows it.

Shakespeare’s theme of the unnatural pervades every element – a stage set already crumbling into decay long before the first drop of innocent blood is spilled; an elderly witch with the protruding belly of a pregnant woman; a soundtrack of white noise, dramatic chords and hooting owls.

Escheresque staircases climb into unseen rooms, drainpipes spew water and the scenery dwarfs the players as though they are mere pawns in a greater game.

Morrissey’s Macbeth is commanding – there will be audience members left with dry eyes from feeling unable to blink during his performance
He speaks Shakespeare’s words as if they belong to him and as if iambic pentameter were his mother tongue – not a syllable lost between his lips and the listeners’ ears.

His performance is emotional but never overblown – his portrayal of the bloodthirsty Scot shifts from straight-spined statesman to a fervent slayer, and he has real chemistry with Julia Ford, who stepped into the role of Lady Macbeth just three weeks ago when Jemma Redgrave pulled out for “personal reasons”. Although her opening scene was unsteady, the Cheshire-born actor soon made the part her own – a fragile yet determined wife whose ambition appears driven more by an almost primitive urge for survival than a straightforward lust for power.

There are moments when she even seems gentle.

This Lady Macbeth descends gradually into madness, rather than appearing power-obsessed one minute and guilt-ridden the next – her facial expressions saying more than her words as she is slowly broken by the rift that killing Duncan has driven between her and her husband.

Her final scene is painfully wretched and difficult to witness.

The two leads are backed by a robust cast, almost all of whom have appeared on the Everyman stage before – from Eileen O’Brien, who acted under Jonathan Pryce in the 70s, to Shaun Mason, who starred in 2009’s Billy Wonderful.

Whizzbang special effects – pyrotechnics, real flames and a digital screen lifted from an onstage pond – add to the drama, but with a production like this are pretty much gilding the lily.

If Morrissey’s Macbeth is intended to set the bar for the new Everyman, future generations of actors will need a pole if they are to get anywhere near vaulting over it.

Willy Russell once praised the Everyman theatre in Liverpool as "a place where you could go and see an exciting new musical or a really good Shakespeare while sitting on a bag of cement". In recent years, the theatre's motley assortment of threadbare cinema seats and old pews has become so unforgiving that a bag of cement seems unimaginable luxury. But once this final production closes in June, the whole auditorium will be reduced to rubble as a £28m redevelopment rises to replace it.

One trusts that the new Everyman will encapsulate the venue's special aura of rough magic, albeit with more legroom. The Everyman has been a remarkable crucible of new talent since Terry Hands [see footnote] first established the company in 1964. The first wave of alumni included Julie Walters, Bill Nighy and Jonathan Pryce [see footnote]. Gemma Bodinetz's valedictory production features a leading light of the second generation, David Morrissey, who emerged from the Everyman's celebrated youth theatre alongside Mark McGann and Cathy Tyson.

You never went to the Everyman expecting beauty, although Francis O'Connor's split-level design is brutally ugly. The stained concrete stairwell in the corner requires only a pay station and a soiled tramp at the bottom to complete the illusion of an underground car park.

Yet, as Bodinetz's uncompromising production proves, Macbeth can be a brutally ugly play. Colin Grenfell's harsh lighting fizzles and sputters, composer Peter Coyte provides aggressive blasts of music, and Macbeth's hired thugs don't pull their punches: the slaughter of the Macduff family is so clinically executed that the audience gasped in shock.

Morrissey's Macbeth is a dour, brooding figure whose elevation to the top job exposes psychological flaws – one can't help thinking of Gordon Brown. There have been more melliflous interpretations: Morrissey's blunt, flattened vowels tend to turn the music of the verse into a series of dull thuds. But it's frighteningly insistent nonetheless, like the hammering of a big bass drum. Restless and increasingly wild-eyed, Morrissey powers his way through the many soliloquies as if they are a series of psychological pep-talks designed to pump himself up to the next level of depravity.

It is up to Julia Ford's surprisingly feminine Lady Macbeth to supply most of the poetry. Her incantatory call to be "unsex'd" sounds less like a diabolical ploy than the expression of a despairing hope that an empty throne might compensate for a barren womb.

Matthew Flynn's Macduff is rugged, honest and gets the job done, while Ken Bradshaw's Banquo makes uncommon sense of the bizarre, often-cut observation of the behaviour of the martlets nesting in the Macbeth's battlements: while the thane grows increasingly twitchy, his second-in-command remains a twitcher at heart.

Although the ensemble is strong, Bodinetz incorporates some effective doubling. No sooner has Richard Bremmer's frail Duncan been murdered than he immediately re-appears as the Porter, suggesting a fast-track descent to Hell, before finally being reincarnated as a ghoulish Doctor, prompting Lady Macbeth's recollection that she never knew 'the old man to have so much blood in him.' Nathan McMullen's fine, impassive Fleance becomes the agent of his own destiny, intriguingly cross-dressing to join the coven of weird sisters. The final image leaves you in no doubt that the powers of darkness have inherited the keys to the kingdom. The Everyman is dead: long live the Everyman.

• This footnote was appended on 25 May 2011. To clarify: Terry Hands was one of three people who were the founding fathers of the Everyman. The other two are Martin Jenkins and Peter James. The next sentence suggests that Julie Walters, Bill Nighy and Jonathan Pryce whe first wave of alumni" when in fact they joined the company several years later. Those who were among the company in the early days of the theatre include Susan Fleetwood, John McEnery and Maureen O'Brien.

AT last, a production that does justice to Shakespeare’s darkest tragedy.

In the last production before the old Everyman theatre closes to be completely rebuilt and rise like a phoenix in 2013, artistic director Gemma Bodinetz delivers a Macbeth worthy of the name.

With a terrific cast led by David Morrissey as the bloodstained protagonist, this is a sturdy, lucid and terrifying production. The atmosphere conjured by Francis O’Connor’s set depicting a dank, decaying castle lit by sputtering industrial lamps, is palpably evil; the arrival of the three obscenely unpleasant witches sets the tone.

Morrissey moves from vacillating soldier to incarnadined villain with assurance, showing naked fear and paranoia as his murderous acts haunt him throughout. He is immeasurably supported by Julia Ford, bravely stepping in after the mysterious exit of the original Lady Macbeth, Jemma Redgrave,  three weeks before first night.
Her wholesome and innocent appearance give an extra chill to her ruthless determination to help her husband on the way to the throne of Scotland, even if it means a few murders en route.
Around this vortex of evil, the remaining cast circle with dark and dynamic energy, doubling and sometimes trebling their roles.

Ken Bradshaw’s Banquo is a noble brute; so, too, is Matthew Fllynn’s Macduff – whose reaction to the news that his wife and children have been slaughtered is unbearably moving.

Elsewhere, terrific performances surface – Mark Arends’ youthful Malcolm reveals the politically manipulative monarch-in-waiting. And the cadaverous Richard Bremmer is the best Porter I have ever scene – played as an English valet like Max Wall trying to retain his dignity after a skinful.

There is a hurtling sense of pace, fuelled by the prophesises of the witches and Macbeth’s increasing paranoia. Rarely have I been so thrilled and moved by this play. Ford brings a degree of heartbreak to the sleepwalking scene that is unusual, though having the Doctor dressed as an undertaker is a tad de trop.

The atmosphere is so thick with blood that actual bloodletting is kept to a minimum; Lady Macduff is drowned in a pool after her son has his neck broken – a scene that brought a collective gasp from the entire audience. Even the use of a video screen to relay the ghosts and future kings of Scotland is strange – pulled as it is from a pool of water. No wonder the electrics are constantly on the fritz. It’s the business. The bloody business.

Liverpool actor David Morrissey takes top billing in his home city as Macbeth bringing the curtain down on the Everyman theatre as it prepares to be demolished to make way for its redevelopment.

The theatre is treating the north west to another big name on the stage, as Morrissey follows in the recent footsteps of Jonathan Pryce and the sadly missed Pete Postlethwaite; returning to the Everyman where he honed his skills as a young actor, just as they did.

What a return. Morrissey’s bearded Macbeth is gripping stuff and transfixing to watch, and he is supported by an equally absorbing cast. Whilst taking our seats there is a gradual, misty and smoky atmosphere building around us before the witches - or weird sisters as they’re referred to - enter the stage to a table covered by a battlefield map that is lowered from the roof.

Macbeth’s fate of becoming the Thane of Cowdor and then King is forecast to him, triggering the start of this production of Shakespeare’s tragedy. The Bard’s themes of paranoia and fear – mostly through Morrissey – are tapped into and conveyed a great deal.

When Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, played by Cheshire actress Julia Ford, have murdered King Duncan and have blood on their hands – and there is a lot of it – Morrissey and Ford keep your eyes firmly fixed on their exchanges and build up so much anxiety and torment.

Morrissey is a blokey bloke and heavy footed around the stage - you’re instantly aware of his presence. Ford, brought in as a replacement for Jemma Redgrave who pulled out for “personal reasons", delivers a fine foil to him. Losing Redgrave could be seen as a tragedy but Ford assures this production is not cursed and delivers a fragile, yet determined, interpretation of the role. She is not the most memorable, however.

Richard Bremmer shows great versatility as King Duncan, the porter and the doctor. The seasoned actor brings out the only humour in the production when playing the porter, which is timely giving all the terrorising and morbid scenarios being created elsewhere.

Gillian Kearney – another from Liverpool – also shows versatile prowess playing a witch and Lady Macduff. And the tragic death scene of the latter character will have me pondering for a long time how Kearney managed to keep her breath, after she is ‘drowned’ front of stage.

Francis O’Connor’s set is magnificent and imaginative; creating an industrial feel that is dingy and fitting to the warring world and tyranny within Macbeth. Loose cables running from the ceiling into a water filled cavernous crack in the set produce occasional electric sparks into the ‘Scottish play’. Atmosphere is also generated through spine tingling sound and costumes are military in look and predominately dark colours.

Gemma Bodinetz, artistic director of the Everyman and its sister the Playhouse, who is directing her first Shakespeare since arriving to Liverpool nearly eight years ago, has decided to establish no boundaries in this new production. The cast members walk through the audience to either embrace or confront each other, making you feel as though you are right in the heart of the action over the three hours of performance.

But this technique only works because of it being in the right theatre. Soon it’ll be a farewell to the Everyman, such a fitting name to a space that really pulls both the performer and audience together. Long live the new Everyman.