_{Cover Image: Charles Dashwood as Macbeth & Jurgen Rahimi as Banquo with Polly Hilton, Brent Carson, Asja Petrovski as Influencers in Macbeth. Image by Sergey Pevnev.}

Macbeth choreographed by Alice Topp, presented by West Australian Ballet

His Majesty’s Theatre, Perth

4-19 September 2026

Reviewed Saturday 5 September 2026

It’s one of Shakespeare’s most dramatic, ghostly stories, and a play steeped in unique intrigue and superstition – known for years as The Scottish Play by those who fear uttering its true name will bring back luck on all within its reach.

But the question is, can a modern version of this famous play stand up and deliver without the assistance of one of its most enduring qualities – devoid of its stunning use of language and the poetry of Shakespeare’s verse?

In the hands of Australian choreographer Alice Topp, in a work co-commissioned by West Australian Ballet and Royal New Zealand Ballet (that also marks the artist’s second-ever full length ballet creation, after her piece Butterfly Effect for West Australian Ballet in 2025), the answer to this question appears to be: yes.

Topp’s take on Shakespeare’s Macbeth proves this twisted Elizabethan tale does indeed succeed as a contemporary ballet. In this case, it’s thanks largely to the choreographer’s astute choices to replace The Bard’s text with the language of the body that bring its protagonists’ blind obsession with power and the wickedness of their ambitious rise to resonant light.

But it’s the work’s leading players – the dancers in the roles of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth – who are equally vital to its success. From beginning to end, West Australian Ballet Principal Artists Oscar Valdés (Macbeth) and Dayana Hardy Acuña (Lady Macbeth) infuse their characters with a propulsive force that draws us into their complex worlds where their hunger for authority is inextricably linked to their love for each other.

As they come together in compelling duets throughout, their sensuous desire for each other overflows. We watch Acuña’s legs extend into strong arabesques (sometimes at 180 degrees), before she is embraced by Valdés and raised into seated lifts on his shoulders.

Watching their bodies (Acuña’s dressed in satin silk slips and Valdés’ in white shirts and business pants) bend and slide against each other, we realise Topp’s choreographic style leans distinctly towards contemporary dance. Her moves are athletic, vigorous and bold, and prove the perfect match for the protagonists’ fierce passion for each other.

Valdés and Acuña arguably reach their peak in one of the work’s final duets (late in Act Two). Here, we she a dishevelled, bare-footed Lady Macbeth heaved and flung by her partner as if her life is already extinguished. After this stunning scene in which the couple’s inner turmoils are laid bare through their dance, Acuña’s final solo is Act Two’s other clear show-stopper.

Aside from the work’s standout dance elements, Jon Buswell’s design choices are its other obvious strengths. Staging the work’s suspenseful hinge moments against a lofty split-level set, and using a giant metallic lattice screen as the show’s prominent curtain-piece and backdrop, highlights the main characters’ steely resolve, while revealing the fragmented emotions at the heart of their quest.

Composer Christopher Gordon’s score is also very good, especially in Act One. But the decision to place so many different genres together throughout the work – with orchestral music on either side of jazzy numbers and a few synthy 90s rock ballads in between – is too much. While these eclectic styles fit their individual scenes, a less crowded soundscore would have allowed the ballet to feel more cohesive overall.

Another slightly awkward feature (that is also a little overdone) is the director’s choice to use social media and its supposedly poisonous effects as one of the work’s new ‘modern’ themes. While Topp’s ‘three witches’ (played by Nikki Blain, Indiana Scott and Adam Alzaim) bristle with an otherworldly derangement that echoes Shakespeare’s original, their constant selfie-snapping and preening is more of a distraction than a core pillar of the work (but maybe that’s the point?).

What’s far more compelling is when the work’s ensemble scenes invoke Wolf of Wall Street archetypes, and contain other allusions to aggressive corporate power. These sequences also include sharp duets between Macbeth and some of his closest associates (Gakuro Matsui shines in the role of Banquo, and Jack Whiter does equally well as Macduff).

All in all, Topp’s Macbeth feels like it achieves a rare thing in bringing this hugely famous historic work to new life (through dance) and in ways that don’t diminish its original fire which shows us the dark depths of our capacities for destruction when possessed by unquenchable desires for supreme (and ultimately unattainable) power.

Macbeth is on until 19 September. Book here.