IN the spartan and, frankly, chilly vault of the semi-converted

Dowanhill church, nine girls writhed like serpents in a circus ring

filled with bark and bones. From a minstrels' gallery a string and wind

ensemble struggled to be heard above a Hammeresque organ. Unfortunately

for musical director Ralph Haggerty, the memorable music of this

production was to be the hisses and cackles of the triple cast of

witches.

It could easily have been otherwise, but this device -- surely

prompted partly by director Mary McCluskey's need to create as many

parts as possible for the participants in Scottish Youth Theatre's

summer festival -- proved thrice as menacing. These witches were

omnipresent, literally never off-stage and controlling each step of the

action.

They echoed the lines of some characters, commented -- from a position

of superior knowledge -- on the utterances of others. They answered

rhetorical questions and led the audience in the required responses.

When Macbeth tells his wife: ''We'll proceed no further with this

business,'' they gave a chorus of ''Aw'' -- and got away with it.

They were utterly mesmeric and they completely skewed the whole play.

Small wonder David Walker -- a Macbeth you warmed to and even felt sorry

for -- gulped at his soliloquies; there was no room for ''vaulting

ambition'' here. This production is an unequal contest between the

principals and the forces of the supernatural. The mere mortals never

stood a chance.

Only Kananu Kirimi's Lady Macbeth lasted a couple of rounds and that

was as much because she is an ally shoving her husband in the same

direction as through her strong performance. By the time of the

sleepwalking scene even she was beaten.

It's daft at the fag-end of the twentieth century to complain about

tampering with the bard, and SYT have every reason to be proud of this

production, both in its realisation and many of the performances. But it

was only half a Macbeth.