British Council: Macbeth, Act 1, Scene 1

David Wilson unleashes a devilishly good short film for the Shakespeare Lives season.

Last seen kicking butt in TV cop series Line Of Duty, actress Vicky McClure is developing a nice line in feisty females and here unleashes her inner demons as Lady Macbeth in the Colonel Blimp director’s dazzling short.

It’s the fourth film in series of modern interpretations from The British Council’s Shakespeare Lives in 2016 programme, which celebrates the 400th anniversary of the bard’s death. Wilson says he was given “free rein" to re-imagine the Macbeth scene. He and animator Ian Miller have certainly run off with that rein and conjured up something darkly brilliant.

The 2-minute film opens in live-action with McClure lurking on the ‘battlements’ of an affluent, modernist house at night, smoking and talking to ravens. She’s quoting from the soliloquy in Act 1, Scene V in which the scheming queen summons up her demons so that she might do dastardly deeds.

“Unsex me here,” she cries, wishing to lose her femininity and become a genderless monster. Sure enough, aided by Miller's eye-popping, Manga-style animation, she morphs into a writhing beast of foulness – flesh and bones dissolve into evil worms and soon not much is left of her but a really bad set of gnashers and, finally, a pair of fiery, fiendish eyes.   

See here for another in the British Council's series, a scene from Julius Caesar, interpreted by fellow Colonel Blimp director Pedro Martin-Calero.