It’s a brave decision to do The Scottish Play – or opera – in Perth. Suspension of disbelief is that bit more difficult when Birnam Wood and Dunsinane Hill are only a few miles out of town.  For English Touring Opera’s production of Macbeth, director James Dacre and designer Frankie Bradshaw neatly avoid the problem in the coldest set - grey walls, the only colour being a sapphire-blue-upholstered daybed and the royal blue dress Lady Macbeth chooses to greet King Duncan. Even Rory Beaton’s lighting is cold; Macbeth’s dagger aria is bathed in harsh white. The absence of red (other than wine) places the action in a particularly bleak Perthshire winter.

Nor is there tartan. The men wear combat or uniform jackets with dark trousers. The witches first appear during the overture, on the battlefield as nurses treating the wounded. At their next appearance, when they meet Macbeth and Banquo, their green gowns and hoods look like nun’s habits. They pop up from time to time, like a Greek chorus; for example their lanterns light Lady Macbeth’s sleepwalking – which is not restricted to the aria – and Macbeth’s death scene.

Banquo is a plain man and Verdi gives him plain music to sing. Andrew Slater sings it straight like the bluff character he is.

Tanya Hurst’s excellent Lady Macbeth is at her sweetest in the banquet drinking song, light and rippling merrily along. Otherwise she achieves a mix of gleeful shrieking, bossiness, and emotionless detachment, except in the anguish of the sleepwalking scene.

Grant Doyle’s Macbeth, however, has a greater emotional range. He is conflicted but, having taken the step … The loneliness of his decision-making is emphasised in the dagger scene; the pair sit in separate rooms, she pouring glass after glass of wine, he agonising over what to do. When he decides to return to the witches, they have been preparing a brew - each with a pestle and mortar, each grind precisely choreographed. He drinks the brew and sees the visions, the wood being symbolised as a bare branch.

The wretched country sees the chorus, huddled in rags, crowding on from the rear of the stage.  Macduff (Amar Muchhala) has taken to the bottle after the murder of his wife and children, but David Lynn’s Malcolm effectively rouses him to join him in action.  

With about half as many players as some companies, conductor Gerry Cornelius and the orchestra  produce the soundscape that is less a wall of sound, adding to the bleakness on stage. The battle scene fugue is particularly effective in this.

The takeaway from this production is the distance which already exists between Banquo and Macbeth as early as their duet after the messenger has arrived to announce him thane of Cawdor; while Macbeth is on his own, Banquo is standing round a brazier with some of the other men in the army. It is a foretaste of the isolation which increasingly afflicts Macbeth as the prophecies unfold.