Shakespeare’s Globe recently announced its forthcoming production of Henry VIII, the play during which an errant cannon caught fire and eventually razed the original theatre to the ground. Assuming that bad luck can’t strike twice, the Globe is not only resurrecting Henry VIII: daringly, it is also opening up its boards to the infamously unlucky Macbeth. But not before the Globe’s smaller sibling, the contemporaneous Rose Theatre Bankside, gets there first. Unlike the reconstructed Globe, the Rose is still in ruins and scattered under an office block next to Southwark Bridge. The theatre’s stage and audience sit side by side on a narrow platform.

David Pearce’s production of The Tragedie of Macbeth, originally staged at the Rose in November, reopened last Thursday. Audience members huddled in the lobby of the underground playhouse listening to one of the resident historians explain the significance of the site. “Tomorrow is an exciting day,” he told his audience. “We’re submitting an application to the Heritage Lottery Fund, which we have been talking about for years.” The Rose is asking for £4.6 million to fund further research into the site, open it up permanently for visitors and transform the theatre. That is an exciting prospect.

Its success will ultimately lie on whether the Rose can stage decent plays. Fortunately, the audience in the Rose last Thursday was definitely happy with Pearce’s haunting rendition of the Scottish play. Some audience members, despite being so close to the bowing actors that you could see where they hadn’t quite wiped off all their stage blood, even hooted their approval.

For the most part, I agreed with them. It is a reasonable production. Robert Caretta adopts a strong presence as the failed Machiavellian title character. His performance is the best: he manages to tread the thin line between maniac and victim while at the same time evoking a certain breed of class seen nowhere else in the cast. That is not to say that the rest of the players are no good; just that Caretta is a much more seductive actor. His Macbeth teases the audience: we want to know more about him, to hear him explain everything for us.

With Lady Macbeth, on the other hand, there is no guessing needed. Portrayed by Suzanne Marie, the true villain of the piece is nervy, erratic and more than a little terrifying. Tall and slender, Marie has pale skin but dark hair and eyes: she is Tolkien’s Arwen gone wrong. Sometimes, a little too wrong. In her final scene, when she is wracked with guilt by the crimes she and her husband have committed, Lady Macbeth unfortunately slips into an insanity that is too extreme. I quickly became impatient with her. This scene, her most revealing, should be subtly crushing. Instead, it was a tad irksome. Nevertheless, her eyes will stay with me for a long time: deep, frightening and persuasive – perfect for Lady Macbeth.

It is not only Lady Macbeth’s eyes that are scary in Pearce’s production. The witches, so often difficult to get right, are particularly eerie: their entrance at the very beginning is unsettling and certainly memorable. Banquo’s ghost also gave me the shivers, rising as it does from underneath the banquet table and taking the seat offered to Macbeth. As Banquo, Nicholas Kempsey seems to hover around poor Macbeth. It is genuinely scary, made all the more atmospheric for the freezing February temperatures in the Rose.

Some scare tactics did not work out so well though: the use of shadows to depict other mystical aspects of the play comes off as cheap and two-dimensional which, of course, it is. And therein lies the rub: shadows on a screen can be effective, but only if used dynamically. Otherwise they end up looking like shadows on a screen, not spirits or daggers.

The staging as a whole is slightly problematic. Although I see no way round the long narrow stage that has an entrance at either end, as characters appear from opposite directions, at times it felt like watching a tennis match. However, the net effect is valuable: players that can appear at any time (useful in Macbeth) and quick changeovers necessary for some of Shakespeare’s shorter scenes.

The stage would likely become much more adaptable if the Rose received its Heritage Lottery money. But I hope that if its fortunes are to improve, the Rose keeps its idiosyncratic nature. The Globe is a wonderful arena for popular, large-scale Shakespeare; let the Rose retain its dark and dingy place on the fringe. I predict that the Globe’s Macbeth will be much different – not necessarily better or worse – but the two theatres can certainly compliment each other by retaining their distinctly separate identities.

Fringe benefits

Getting down and dirty with Shakespeare in a basement half-flooded by the muddy waters of the Thames is a real bonus to anything staged at the Rose. With Macbeth, it is doubly fun and makes for a dark atmosphere that the Globe won’t be able to pull off on a summer’s evening.