Forced into a loveless marriage with a man twice her age in order to pay off a family debt, Katherine (Florence Pugh) is reluctantly under the domineering keep of her impotent husband (Paul Hilton) and equally acrimonious father-in-law (Christopher Fairbank). Limited to the soulless confines of their stately yet draughty manor, Katherine is practically forbade any semblance of freedom, and the young bride’s daily interactions are restricted to that of her passive and unsympathetic housemaid Anna (Naomi Ackie). Both spouses are heartily dispassionate in consummating their marriage, so this leads Katherine’s bored and wandering eye to cocksure groomsman Sebastian (Cosmo Jarvis) and the two unite on a primal and lust-ridden affair. This sexual awakening releases a conniving empowerment that briskly consumes Katherine’s whole ideology. Director William Oldroyd switches his habitual theatre sanctuary (a residency at the Young Vic being just the tip of his CV) for the untested pastures of filmmaking. He shrewdly navigates a surplus of achingly relevant themes alternating from gender, class and race with a sure-footed vision that whisks by at a bracing 89 minutes. Shot on a micro budget of £500,000 in Northumberland on a 24 day shoot, Lady Macbeth is defined by a tensely austere atmosphere that is framed amongst the ambiguity of mist-covered moors. Costume designer Holly Waddington suffocates the conspiring protagonist both physically and metaphorically in skin-cinching corsets which underlie lavishly restrained frocks, emphasising Katherine’s constrained role both morally and bodily. Lady Macbeth is in UK cinemas now.