Review: Macbeth
West Australian Ballet (co-produced with Royal New Zealand Ballet)
His Majesty’s Theatre, Saturday 5 September 2026
Review by Nina Levy
Full disclosure: I’ve been anticipating Alice Topp’s take on Macbeth for a year.
When West Australian Ballet announced the co-production of this new work with Royal New Zealand Ballet, I was still buzzing from the impact of Topp’s 2025 Butterfly Effect, so the news that another creation was in the works was most welcome.
And Topp has delivered, taking Shakespeare’s tragic tale and transporting it into a contemporary setting. The result is clever, compelling and world-class.
Like Butterfly Effect, this contemporary ballet’s strength lies in the quality and interplay of each creative element, foreshadowed by the visually arresting opening in which Shakespeare's famous words “Something wicked this way comes” are writ large, hovering ghostlike on a scrim.
That something wicked is not underpinned by the centuries-old misogynist tropes about female power found in Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Topp’s trio are not witches, but influencers, and reveal the terrifying role that social media can play in shaping private discourse and public outcomes.
Supported by dramaturg Ruth Little, Topp’s libretto stays close to the original Shakespearean plotline but places it in the world of 21st century politics. At a time when it often feels like democracy is an illusion, this story of a couple who will stop at nothing to gain power rings painfully true.
Composer Christopher Gordon has made the unusual but effective choice of combining live and recorded music, allowing him to segue across music genres and creating a cinematic score; the live component evocatively performed here by West Australian Symphony Orchestra under conductor Joel Bass.
Our initial encounter with the influencers is one of the work’s many highlights. In the first scene, Gordon’s haunting choral vocals mix with live cackles and cries from the three influencers. It’s an appropriately eerie soundscape as the dancers’ wild gestures entangle with one another and stir invisible cauldrons of gossip and speculation. In the casting viewed (one of five) Nikki Blain, Indiana Scott and Adam Alzaim were at once comic and terrifying.
We meet Macbeth – the leader of a political faction – and his allies in a fierce debate with the opposition. The swagger and aggression of each party is all too recognisable, Topp turning the verbal sparring of a political debate into physical rough and tumble that belies the dancers’ sombre suits, accompanied by the unbridled energy of Gordon’s electric guitar and drum riffs. Jon Buswell’s series of pressed-tin-style flats make a suitably steely backdrop for this scene, whilst a second storey is lit rosy as we encounter Lady Macbeth, sensuous in her bathtub.
Highly mobile, Buswell’s set is also designed for versatility, carving or opening space as required. Later, his dramatic depiction of a smoking crown that dissolves against Gordon’s cacophony of voices makes an electrifying conclusion to Act I.
As Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, Oscar Valdés and Dayana Hardy Acuña were enthralling in this cast. Topp’s choreography for the couple is as complex as their relationship, often angular with lifts that intertwine limbs and bodies. Unshaken by an early wobble, the pair were mesmerising, in both their mastery of the challenging choreography and portrayal of psychological struggles.
There are many other treats here, all beautifully danced in the casting viewed.
Two party scenes have more than a touch of a Baz Luhrmann film about them. At the second, a banquet to celebrate Macbeth’s ascension to leadership, Aleisa Jelbart’s costumes for the women create gorgeously sculptural black silhouettes against Buswell’s red drapes. The rising of Banquo’s ghost (a chilling Gakuro Matsui) is thrilling, even though we know it’s coming.
A short but striking Act II scene sees Macbeth’s colleagues traverse the stage, their arms extended like birds of prey as they come in for the kill.
And though the quote,
“Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood
Clean from my hand?”
doesn’t feature directly in the work – Topp’s use of shivering hand motifs throughout pays subtle and pleasing homage to this line.
Condensing the plot of a five act play into a two act ballet may sound ambitious but the result is utterly thrilling. A must-see.
-Nina Levy
Macbeth continues at His Majesty’s Theatre until 19 September 2026.