Macbeth

Grade: C

Macbeth is my favorite Shakespeare tragedy, and likely my favorite Shakespeare play. It’s one of the few pieces of theatre where I don’t care what character I am, I just want to be in it one day. (Are you listening, movers and shakers at the Shakespeare Tavern? There’s not a theatre in the world I’d rather do this show at.) I struggle to put my finger on why it means so much to me. I believe it’s a combination of sentimental value (it was the first show to run during my apprentice season at the Tavern, I had to see it many times, so therefore, it was the first Billy Shakes play I really “got”) and the fact that everything about it – the darkness and creepiness – takes me right to October, my favorite month of the year. It is the only Shakespeare play where I’m disappointed when it’s over. The new movie version, starring Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard, had the exact opposite effect on me. It is a poor representation of the play, and one that I hope kids new to it won’t have to watch in school. Much of what delights me about the play was cut or at least greatly diminished. There’s no Porter scene, I don’t remember ever seeing Lady MacDuff, and the weird sisters are but glorified cameos. Remember that great scene where they’re talking about the mean tricks they’ll play on people, like causing a shipwreck because a woman wouldn’t share her chestnuts? Yeah, you won’t find that here. Many of the adult men look confusingly too similar to each other. The final confrontation between MacDuff and MacBeth was literally a hot mess, as I strained to tell the actors apart. I did enjoy a VERY fun and interesting choice made during the “screw your courage to the sticking place” dialogue (let’s just say he did just that), but other than that, this adaptation has been stripped of so much of what makes the source material special, and has been reduced to a dismal, one-note downer. 95% of all text here is whispered. This is a quiet, downtrodden version of Macbeth; the kind that only serves to reinforce beliefs that Shakespeare is boring and inaccessible. I could have used more sound and fury. It at least would have signified something. Grade: C