The Lord Chamberlain’s Men, the UK’s premier open-air all-male touring theatre company, arrived in Austen country last week, for just one evening, to give a riveting performance of Shakespeare’s Macbeth in the picturesque grounds of Chawton House.

This production might have been abridged to just 95 minutes, but it lost nothing in its telling by this multi-talented band of seven fit young actors, each one taking on multiple roles in rapid succession using a multi-purpose single set for their non-stop exits and entrances.

The company was founded in 2004 and named after the The Lord Chamberlain’s Men, for which Shakespeare wrote many of his most popular plays during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. When Scotland’s King James I succeeded Elizabeth and became its patron, the company was renamed The King’s Men. It was during this time that Macbeth was written, which no doubt kept the Stuart monarch on side.

They are on a tour taking them to 70 venues from North Yorkshire to Cornwall and Europe in 17 weeks – quite a feat when you consider they erect and dismantle their own stage.

A mild summer’s evening on a manicured lawn was not perhaps that ‘blasted heath’ in the wilds of Scotland envisaged by the Bard. But with creative magic from producer/artistic director Peter Stickney, and a talented team of stage and costume designers, they were able to conjure up a dreigh scene shrouded in a dank mist to transport their audience, fortified by picnics washed down with a glass of sparkling wine, back to 11th-century Scotland when murder and mayhem stalked the earth.

The rhythmic sound of drums accompanied by the harmonious singing of a late medieval song of war brought the seven actors on stage to play out this grim tragedy to its grisly conclusion.

From a construction made of dark heavy wooden blocks, the actors in their various roles rotated in and out of the action at a fast and furious pace, although those three ghastly witches stayed front of stage to cast into a bubbling cauldron their hellish brew of vile ingredients to stir up toil and trouble for the nobility of Scotland.

Each one of the cast deserves praise for their performances in whatever guise or gender.

They never missed a beat for the full-on, non-stop production, all the while building up drama and tension to keep their audience fully immersed in the blood-soaked plot.

Here’s hoping The Lord Chamberlain’s Men will return to Chawton, when surely as was the case this year their Shakespearian offering will be a highlight on the Chawton House calendar.

Sue Cansfield