Crown of Blood moves Macbeth’s blasted heath to Yorubaland

Tall, wooden, carved pillars framed by raffia screens stand four to either side of an imposing throne. In front of this stretches a sandy yellow stage (Kevin Jenkins’s design). Crown of Blood relocates Macbeth to 19th-century Yorubaland, an area covering parts of today’s Nigeria, Togo and Benin.

As the title suggests, Akira Kurosawa’s 1957 film Throne of Blood was one of the influences on the playwright Oladipo Agboluaje’s adaptation for Utopia Theatre (in co-production with Sheffield Theatres). Where the film-maker concentrates the focus of the drama on the tragic hero, Agboluaje widens the scope of the action by extending the murderous couple’s motivations and weaving them into a wider historical, social, political and personal context.

Oyebisi [Lady Macbeth], who was captured and enslaved in her youth because Iwalagba [Duncan] wanted to extend the Oyo empire, is fixated on vengeance. Aderemi [Macbeth], son of a blacksmith, chafes against his lowly social position: the Oyo state councillors prize the hereditary claim of a wastrel prince over Aderemi’s military achievements. Both Oyebisi and Aderemi are pained by their childlessness.

Temporal and spirit worlds are linked here not by witches but by diviners. They channel messages between the characters and a trickster spirit, only visible to the audience. It is Oyebisi’s manipulation of the divinations that sets her husband on a course for destruction that she cannot then alter, try as she might.

Powerful performances from Kehinde Bankole (Oyebisi) and Deyemi Okanlawon (Aderemi, both pictured left) reveal the love, anguish and antagonism within their marriage.

Mojisola Kareem’s finely crafted direction effectively conveys a sense of the world around the characters, weaving praise singers, dancers and drummers through the action (an excellent, five-strong community chorus amplifying the 12-strong professional cast).

This ambitious and occasionally confusingly complex reimagining intermingles comedy and tragedy, music and spectacle to dramatic and moving effect.

Crown of Blood is at the Crucible theatre, Sheffield, then touring until 6 March

Photograph by Robling Photography