THE Scottish Play meets the Far Eastern cinema of Kurosawa and Zhang Yimou and the Kill Bill movies of Tarantino, in director-designer Damian Cruden's ancient yet modern reinvention of Macbeth.

The blasted heath has been replaced by black sand, a malignant place in which a dagger can stay elusively out of Macbeth's grasp. The clothing is cut in the style of Japanese Samurai warriors; the feet are bare and so are the branches of the single tree under which the three witches gather in giant puppet form to prophesy Macbeth's rise.

Cruden has let us see Terence Maynard's Macbeth triumphant in battle, in a scene choreographed in the style of Chinese martial arts films by movement director Asha Kahlon. Maynard initially stands with his broad back to the audience, lit up like a gladiatorial entrance, and yet the witches can pin him to the ground, as the sands shift beneath him.

That sand will turn to particularly quick sand in Cruden's hands: Macbeth's rise and fall is over in two hours with no interval, courtesy of prudent pruning by editor Richard Hurford.

Forces are at play all around this Macbeth. His kingship built on sand, witches and puppeteers pull his strings, and Barbara Marten's Lady Macbeth shouts at him like a fish wife when he forgets to deposit his murder weapons on Duncan's guards.

John Barber's puppets are everywhere, turning up as Banquo's ghost, spooking Macbeth at a table set in the style of Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper, and later the puppet witches produce puppet after puppet in one visitation that takes the form of a Macbeth dream sequence (Cruden at his inventive best).

Not only the sand is playing up: even the black backdrops close in on Macbeth in moments of darkest thought. All the while, composer Christopher Madin's oriental strings and percussion and Peter Fairclough's drums form a musical Greek chorus.

The visual detail dazzles, from the blood that spurts from Banquo's wrists in red ribbon form to Malcolm Rippeth's lighting, all brilliant blue, Martian orange or blood red, but never obvious black.

However, in turning Japanese, Cruden's Macbeth is a series of cinematic setpieces more than a rounded play, submerging Maynard's Macbeth in the process.

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Updated: 10:25 Thursday, March 03, 2005