It is sacrilege to say this for many serious theatre people. But there is no stage in London to which I trudge more reluctantly than Shakespeare’s Globe. Granted, I’ve seen many a fine performance there, most recently Mark Rylance’s memorably bland Iago in Claire van Kampen’s production of Othello. And perhaps most memorably of all Douglas Hodge in Lucy Bailey’s brilliant 2006 production of Shakespeare’s utterly gratuitous Titus Andronicus. But these exceptions are informed by relief and gratitude that a brilliant director or actor has managed to intensify that which so often evaporates into the Thames-side air.

That said, there is no stage I skip more enthusiastically to than the Globe’s compact and candle-lit Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, where every nuance has the intensity of a whispered secret. And that quality is brilliantly exploited in Robert Hastie’s production of Macbeth, starring Paul Ready, the least Macbeth-ish actor I can think of.

You might remember Ready as stay-at-home dad Kevin in Motherland on TV, or more recently the Machiavellian civil servant in Bodyguard who is capable of assassination but only of the non-violent, political kind. On an actual battlefield he couldn’t say boo to a goose. But the genius of the Globe’s indoor production is the way in which it conjures Macbeth’s interiority. The only source of light here is from torches and candelabra and sometimes from a single candle flame that throws grotesque shadows over walls. And the sense for the audience here is of sitting within the dark recesses of a Macbeth’s blackening mind. Lady Macbeth is hauntingly played by the Globe’s artistic director Michelle Terry. She’s very good in an understated way. Not a Morticia-style vamp as some have portrayed Macbeth’s spouse but something more domestic — as close to a housewife as a Lady of a castle can get. And although it is tempting to find significance in Terry being married to Ready in real life, there is none to speak of. The play’s psychology is the thing here, conveying a deepening and darkening psychosis.

The resolve of Ready’s bookish Macbeth to kill his way to the crown, is not derived from a soldier’s bloodlust, but the realisation that the witches’ prophecies are perfectly logical outcomes if acted on. And so when their seemingly impossible riddle about his demise turns out to be true, it brings the most wonderful moment of irony as Ready’s Macbeth pauses in wry recognition, like a man who finally understands the answer to a fiendishly clever cryptic crossword clue.

Also worth a mention is the stage craft of Hastie’s thriller-paced production which uses misdirection brilliantly. The stage is tiny yet somehow we don’t notice the witches and other characters sitting on the margins until the Macbeths look at them. Pure, chilling, magic.