Theatre reviews: Richard III | Macbeth | The Servant O' Twa Maisters

RICHARD III ****

BOTANIC GARDENS, GLASGOW

MACBETH ***

BOTANIC GARDENS, GLASGOW

THE SERVANT O' TWA MAISTERS ***

PITLOCHRY FESTIVAL THEATRE

MOST students of Shakespeare are taught, at some point, to note the powerful links between the twin tragedies of Richard III and Macbeth. Although they were written more than a decade apart, both plays tell the stories of men who win royal power through murder and deception, unleashing a tide of blood across the nations they rule; both show how these men are haunted by the horror of their crimes, and die savage battlefield deaths, unloved and unmourned. And both were designed by Shakespeare, in his role as a court playwright, to praise the ancestors of the Houses of Tudor and Stuart, and to blight the reputations of their enemies.

It's rare, though, to have a chance to see the two tragedies in such close conjunction as in this year's Bard In The Botanics season in Glasgow; and rarer still to have a chance to savour both the similarities between the two plays, and the powerful differences, highlighted by two strongly contrasting lead performances. Gordon Barr's production of Richard III, staged in the slightly incongruous pleasure-dome setting of the lovely Kibble Palace, is an austere and stripped-down 90-minute affair, in which a cast of just three actors, on a transverse aisle of a stage between two banks of seating, focus tightly on the rogue's progress of murders, manipulations and betrayals by which Richard, the crippled and hunchbacked Duke of Gloucester, first wins and then loses the crown.

At first, the white coats worn by the actors – and the bare hospital trolley on which various corpses are borne away – raise fears that we may be in for a lunatic-asylum, Marat-Sade-style reading of the story that would struggle to mesh with the text. But these hints of madness and pathology remain in the background, while Grant O'Rourke rolls out a fascinating performance as a lethal and playful joker of a Richard, a man without conscience gleefully manipulating the fools around him, and largely unrepentant even in death.

His accumulating crimes are represented by ugly black mourning bands and scarves bound tightly around his white costume, making him ever more twisted and lame with each death; Nicole Cooper and Mark Prendergast act up a storm as a sometimes bewildering assortment of allies and victims. And at the end, we're left with a strong sense of the sheer pace and structural strength of Shakespeare's story; as well as with a memorable portrayal of one of the most unsettling heroes in dramatic history, by one of the most interesting young actors around.

Shakespeare's Macbeth, by contrast, is much more the classic tragic hero, a good man destroyed by the single flaw of ambition, and by his inability to resist the demands of his even more ambitious wife; and Jennifer Dick's rather stately and traditional-looking outdoor production, staged in a couple of woodland clearings, contrives to make this greatest of Shakespeare texts look like a relatively conventional and uninteresting play.

In a lush garden setting comically unlike the blasted heath of the text, Dick's promising 14-strong cast come and go in a range of subtly-coloured rough-weave costumes that makes the show look as if it's been sponsored by a tweed company; they wear little gilded wooden crowns, and generally appear like mediaeval characters in a kitsch history book. There's plenty to enjoy, though, in the general pace and energy of a fairly brisk two-hour production, in Paul Cunningham's troubled and conscience-ridden Macbeth, and in Beth Marshall's lushly attractive and intelligent Lady Macbeth; although as one of the best young actresses currently working in Scotland, she now needs to deepen her vocal range to get the full measure of Shakespeare's mighty verse.

After so much tragedy, it should be a relief to turn to The Servant O' Twa Maisters, Victor Carin's 1965 Scots version of the classic Goldoni comedy, first seen in Venice in 1745. Carin's version of the comedy is a hugely genial affair, a domestic-drama-cum-city-comedy about a bunch of nice people – old Lord Pittendree, his lovely daughter Mary, her would-be fiancé, and various other servants and suitors – involved in a series of misunderstandings not of their own making. The only real agent of mischief is the eponymous servant, Archie Broon, who tries to serve two masters at once in order to eke out his pathetic income; and since he is hardly to blame for his own poverty, even he is no real villain.

Richard Baron's new Pitlochry production – the fifth in this year's Homecoming season – is an all-round decent, pleasant and enjoyable affair, marred by a slight sense of aimlessness and stuffiness. The show has a highly conventional look, all fancy 18th-century costume and big, fast-moving pieces of scenery depicting Edinburgh streets in the age of Enlightenment; and against this elaborate backdrop, Gavin Jon Wright, in a hard-working and hyperactive performance as Archie, seems to struggle to find the heart of the drama, despite a wonderful tartan-tinged Harlequin costume.

There are some fine performances, though, notably from a perfectly-tuned Martyn James as old Pittendree, and from Shirley Darroch, Christopher Daley and Gillian Ford as a gorgeous trio of young folk locked into a uniquely ridiculous love triangle. This show, like many others at Pitlochry this year, makes some inspired use of live music performed by the cast. And although this production will not repeat the sensation created by Carin's version when it launched Tom Fleming's new Royal Lyceum Company, back in 1965, it still reveals a Pitlochry company finding a whole new dimension of ensemble energy and delight in their work, as they sing and dance their way through the first all-Scottish season in the theatre's history.

• Richard III and Macbeth are at the Botanic Gardens, Glasgow, until 1 August. The Servant O' Twa Maisters is in repertoire at Pitlochry Festival Theatre until 16 October.