Tag Archives: macbeth

MACBETH (AN UNDOING)

Liz Kettle portrays a mysterious narrator guiding audiences through a unique version of the Scottish play at TFNA’s Polonsky Shakespeare Center (photo by Ellie Kurtz)

MACBETH (AN UNDOING)
Theatre for a New Audience, Polonsky Shakespeare Center
262 Ashland Pl. between Lafayette Ave. & Fulton St.
Tuesday – Sunday through May 4, $97-$132
www.tfana.org

Zinnie Harris pulls a thread from the Scottish play to unravel and reconstruct it in her unique and appealing revamp, Macbeth (an undoing).

The tinkering begins with the curtain; I can’t remember the last time I saw a curtain used at Theatre for a New Audience’s Polonsky Shakespeare Center. Here it’s like a tease, promising something different, and that’s just what writer-director Harris and the talented ensemble deliver.

The play, arguably William Shakespeare’s most malleable, usually begins with the three witches prognosticating Macbeth’s future, but Harris kicks things off with a theater hand named Carlin (Liz Kettle) telling a knock-knock joke. She knows precisely what the audience is there for. “Misery seekers — here they come. Eyes all nasty and randy for gore. You recognise yourself? Mouths open, tongues out. You’re all the same,” she says. “Death is what you want — blood, despair, the fall of man? It’ll be as you last saw it — but no matter, things fare better when they are played and played again. Never an end to your asking for more. And — what more do we have for your ghouls? Bare boards. Nothing much. If you’re looking for pyrotechnics, you’ll be disappointed — no thunder to speak of, no heath — no lightning, no rain — what will you do? No matter, you say — blood cold and unmoving — just give us the play! The play the play, of course we’re here to do the play.”

Macbeth (an undoing) is a stripped-down version of the tale of power and ambition. The Royal Lyceum Theatre Edinburgh production features a cast of ten actors turning the familiar story upside down and inside out; characters are excised, motivations flipped, and roles reversed on a makeshift set that is constantly being taken down and rebuilt. The central figure is a revamped Lady Macbeth (Nicole Cooper), who takes the reins early and never gives them up.

The basics of the narrative are there: A trio of witches (Emmanuella Cole, Star Penders, Kettle) tells war hero Macbeth (Adam Best) and his right-hand man, Banquo (James Robinson), that the former will become thane of Cawdor and then king and that the latter will be the father of kings. After King Duncan (Marc Mackinnon) indeed names him the new thane of Cawdor, Macbeth and his wife conspire to murder the ruler, who has come to their home to celebrate and spend the night. Macbeth’s rise leaves a trail of blood behind, along with a guilty conscience that overwhelms him.

If that sounds like the traditional Macbeth you’ve seen perhaps numerous times, well, Harris throws a lot of that tradition out the window and reimagines the narrative from a feminist angle, mostly with gritty success.

Lady Macbeth (Nicole Cooper) and her husband search for their sanity in Macbeth (an undoing) (photo by Hollis King)

The bloody soldier (Taqi Nazeer) who announces at the beginning, “Doubtful it stood,” has trouble getting the words out, so Carlin spurs him on. When he says they won the war, she asks the badly wounded man, “Aye, did you win?”

Macbeth is not the heroic figure we are used to seeing at the start of the play; instead, he’s indecisive and tentative, like a grounded bird. Upon learning of his possible future from the witches, he proclaims to Banquo, “I’m the thane of fucking Cawdor.” When Lady Macbeth removes a ladybird (the British term for a ladybug) from his sleeve, declaring it’s good luck, he sees it as “another strange soliciting”; a raven — a bird of prey — shrieks, and Macbeth wonders what he is going to wear for dinner. At the end of the scene, Carlin picks up the ladybird and puts it in a box, saving it to perhaps perform evil deeds later.

Carlin then becomes a bent-over servant who says a line that is usually spoken by the nobleman Lennox: “And the obscure bird clamoured outside the window the livelong night.” She adds, “And yet downstairs a party. Duncan couldn’t hear the screams of the birds over the sound of his own delight.” Duncan might not be able to hear the birds, but we can, courtesy of sound designer Pippa Murphy.

Lady Macduff (Cole) is given more prominence in Harris’s adaptation; she is pregnant and carrying on a torrid affair with Banquo. Her husband (Thierry Mabonga) is a cuckolded buffoon who is always in a hurry. When he tells Malcolm to pick up branches and Malcolm asks where they are, Macduff replies, “On the trees, you idiot. Where branches grow. Though god knows how you grew on the royal one.”

Lennox (Nazeer) and Ross (Laurie Scott), a messenger, seem to have emerged from a contemporary cocktail reception. At the celebration for King Duncan, a bird flies inside. “I don’t like birds,” Malcolm complains. “No matter – I’ll deal with it,” the determined Lady Macbeth says. “It makes a racket,” Lennox adds. “Perhaps Cawdor’s spirit coming to piss on the party — !” Ross concludes. While Shakespeare has Ross and Lady Macduff cousins, Harris changes it to Lady Macduff and Lady Macbeth. “Cousins, as you always remind me, the root and tree of our family are not as close as sisters,” Lady Macbeth opines.

The biggest change occurs in the second act, when Lady Macbeth essentially swaps roles with Macbeth, becoming the central figure, even taking over one of Macbeth’s most famous soliloquies. In this version, Lady Macbeth stares madness in the face as she recounts her numerous failed pregnancies and admits feeling confused about one of the play’s new fragments about her character. She asks the witches, “But even if I was given to remorse and grief, what would she fall down upon? For taking the options that a man would? For living in a life and place that was so brutal that power by any other means was impossible.”

Moments later, Macbeth wonders, “How comes it that all our children die?” Lady Macbeth laughs, looks at him, and responds, “So I am reduced to my infertility after all. Even by you. I thought I loved you.” She’s also reduced to her infertility by Harris, who teeters on the edge of undoing one of her major themes by blaming Lady Macbeth’s impending insanity on her inability to become a mother.

The party is just about over in feminist reimagining of Macbeth (photo by Gerry Goodstein)

Kettle (Dracula: Mina’s Reckoning, Attempts on Her Life) is a splendid host for the 155-minute evening (with intermission), smoothly transitioning among her three roles; I would have loved to see more of her as Carlin, our guide through a sometimes confusing reinterpretation by Harris (The Scent of Roses, The Duchess [of Malfi]) that is often exhilarating and occasionally awkward as she toys with classical tropes. Cooper’s (Coriolanus, Medea) Lady Macbeth is bold and strong, not about to play second fiddle to Best’s (Cyrano De Bergerac, The Beauty Queen of Leenane) duly tentative and jittery Macbeth. Mabonga (Everything Under the Sun, Last Dream on Earth) redefines Lady Macduff, while Penders (Aganeza Scrooge, SCOTS) provides comic relief while engenders sympathy as the not-ready-for-prime-time Malcolm.

Tom Piper’s fog-drenched minimalist set, with metal structures, wooden panels, and various pieces of furniture wheeled on and off, alternates between the present day and the distant past — yes, that’s a telephone and an electric lamp on Lady Macduff’s desk — and shabby-chic fun-house mirrors shift characters’ physical dimensions at certain angles. Alex Berry’s costumes maintain the dichotomy, highlighted by Lady Macduff’s dazzling red dress and a series of magically bloodstained white frocks. Oğuz Kaplangi provides atmospheric interstitial music.

Late in the show, Carlin says to Lady Macbeth, “Knock knock knock, open locks. And perhaps we do meet one more time. In a place where we talk about women helping each other. Of seeing each other as we are.” Lady Macbeth asks, “Why do you do this?” Carlin answers, “Because you always got us wrong.” Harris goes a long way to setting things right, although there are slip-ups.

The play concludes with another new fragment, this one incorporating a snippet of a famous quote from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, as Harris wonders whether her new version has offended anyone, then thinks better of it as birdsong floats in the air. It’s a lovely ending to a tragic story.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

ALL THE DEVILS ARE HERE: HOW SHAKESPEARE INVENTED THE VILLAIN

Patrick Page explores the history of villainy in Shakespeare’s plays in captivating one-man show at DR2 (photo by Julieta Cervantes)

ALL THE DEVILS ARE HERE: HOW SHAKESPEARE INVENTED THE VILLAIN
Daryl Roth Theatre
103 East 15th St. between Irving Pl. & Park Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through March 31, $110-$160
allthedevilsplay.com

In May 2021, Tony nominee Patrick Page presented a streaming version of his one-man show All the Devils Are Here: How Shakespeare Invented the Villain, recorded in Shakespeare Theatre Company’s empty Sidney Harman Hall in DC. At the time, I wrote, “Page knows what of he speaks; in addition to having portrayed his fair share of Shakespeare baddies, he has played Scar in The Lion King, Scrooge in A Christmas Carol, the Green Goblin in Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, Hades in Hadestown, and the Grinch in Dr. Seuss’s How the Grinch Stole Christmas, villains all in one form or another. His command of Shakespeare and the concept of evil is bold and impressive, but he is down-to-earth enough to throw in plenty of surprising modern-day pop-culture references to keep it fresh and relevant to those who might not know much about the Bard or Elizabethan theater.” His bravura performance provided a vital dose of theater to the drama-starved during the lockdowns, and I named it Best Solo Shakespeare Play in twi-ny’s third Pandemic Awards.

He has now brought the show to the Daryl Roth Theatre in Union Square, adapting it for a live audience in the intimate space that seats a mere ninety-nine people. Arnulfo Maldonado’s set features a desk and a chair in front of a red curtain, with various props stored on lighting scaffolds on either side of the stage. Primarily dressed in a red velvet outfit with a vest (the costumes are by Emily Rebholz, with chilling lighting by Stacey Derosier and sinister sound by Darron L West), Page makes only minor garment changes and uses minimal props, including a skull, a dagger, a book, and other items, as he portrays Lady Macbeth (Macbeth), Richard of Gloucester (Richard III), Shylock (The Merchant of Venice), Malvolio (Twelfth Night), Claudius (Hamlet), Angelo (Measure for Measure), Iago (Othello), and other villainous Shakespeare creations. He connects the development of these evildoers to Shakespeare’s own maturation as a playwright, comparing Barabas from Christopher Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta to Aaron the Moor from Titus Andronicus. Exploring the mindset of psychopaths, Page draws a through line among the characters.

“Think of it: It’s a superpower!” he proclaims. “You might become a wizard on Wall Street or an Academy Award–winning producer. You might even become president of the United States. That is a psychopath.”

Page regularly drops in contemporary references, from Facebook and House of Cards to Succession and Uma Thurman as well as a bit of juicy gossip about the Bard.

With his deep, resonant voice and buff body, Page is a mesmerizing performer; it’s easy to be carried away by his imposing stage presence, and the audience’s trust in him is well placed. Simon Godwin, the artistic director of Shakespeare Theatre Company, previously directed Page as King Lear and expertly lets him strut his stuff in All the Devils Are Here as Page delivers a master class in villainy.

Patrick Page beckons the audience to join him on a unique Shakespeare ride in All the Devils Are Here (photo by Julieta Cervantes)

At a talkback after the show I saw, I asked Page about how he adapted the streaming film into the current live play. He responded, “A one-man show is already such a strange thing for an actor because acting is by its very nature a reciprocal process. You really are a reactor. You don’t generate a lot of stuff when you’re in a play with people. You’re simply reacting, listening, reacting, listening, reacting, listening, reacting. So in a one-man show, it’s different. With no audience, of course, you have to make up a lot in your imagination of what might be going on. Now I still have to make up some, but at least you’re there.

“So I feel the vibrations, I feel the energy, I feel the listening, I hear the laughs (as much as I can hear), and that you become my acting partner in the show. And my overall objective, of course, is to communicate this story to you as clearly as I can. And it’s very, very helpful to have someone there listening and thinking, you know, how you would tell a story differently to different people. And so I’m aware that there are people in the audience who have, let us say, a depth of experience with Shakespeare. I’m aware that there are people who’ve had very little experience with Shakespeare. I’m aware that there are people who have had only bad experiences, which many of us have had. It’s likely that you have had bad experiences. And someone tried to get you to read King Lear when you were in high school and, of course, it was completely indecipherable, never meant to be read in that way. So I’m aware of that as I’m telling the story. And that’s part of what animates it.”

With humor and gravitas, Page (Coriolanus, Cymbeline, Casa Valentina, Spring Awakening) deepens our experience of Shakespeare, offering a gift that will stay with you as you continue on your personal adventures with the Bard.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

RemarkaBULL PODVERSATION: EXPLORING LADY MACBETH WITH ISMENIA MENDES

Lady Macbeth (Ismenia Mendes) reaches out to her royal husband (Isabelle Fuhrman) in inventive reimagining of Shakespeare tragedy (photo by Richard Termine)

Who: Ismenia Mendes, Nathan Winkelstein
What: Livestreamed conversation about Lady Macbeth
Where: Red Bull Theater online
When: Monday, May 9, free with advance RSVP (donations accepted), 7:30
Why: Macbeth is all the rage now, with a much-derided version starring Daniel Craig and Ruth Negga currently playing at the Longacre on Broadway and Joel Coen’s film version with Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand having garnered three Oscar nominations. One of the best and most innovative adaptations in decades was staged by Red Bull Theater at the Lucille Lortel in 2019, directed by Erica Schmidt and set at a girls school. The fierce and furious, sexy and sinister ninety minutes starred Isabelle Fuhrman as Macbeth and Ismenia Mendes as Lady Macbeth.

In conjunction with the streaming release of the 2019 production, available on demand May 16-29, Red Bull is hosting its latest RemarkaBULL Podversation, “Exploring Lady Macbeth,” with Mendes (Troilus and Cressida, Henry V) and associate artistic director and host Nathan Winkelstein performing the “How now! what news?” scene, followed by a discussion and an audience Q&A. In the dastardly dialogue, Lady Macbeth tells her husband, “What beast was’t, then, / That made you break this enterprise to me? / When you durst do it, then you were a man; / And, to be more than what you were, you would / Be so much more the man. Nor time nor place / Did then adhere, and yet you would make both: / They have made themselves, and that their fitness now / Does unmake you. I have given suck, and know / How tender ’tis to love the babe that milks me: / I would, while it was smiling in my face, / Have pluck’d my nipple from his boneless gums, / And dash’d the brains out, had I so sworn as you / Have done to this.” Previous RemarkaBULL Podversations, which are always a treat, have featured Kate Burton, André De Shields, Elizabeth Marvel, Chukwudi Iwuji, Patrick Page, Lily Rabe, Jay O. Sanders, Michael Urie, and others and can be viewed for free here.

MACBETH

Daniel Craig and Ruth Negga star as a devious husband and wife in Sam Gold’s unusual take on the Scottish play at the Longacre (photo by Joan Marcus)

MACBETH
Longacre Theatre
220 West 48th St. between Broadway & Eighth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through July 10, $35-$425
macbethbroadway.com

As you enter the Longacre Theatre to see the latest conjuring of Macbeth, the thane’s first appearance on the Great White Way since Terry Hands’s 2000 version with Kelsey Grammer lasted just thirteen performances, the sparse stage is a scene of activity. On one side, three people are cooking soup while listening to a podcast. Various others wander about or are busy in the wings. Front and center, the ghost light glows — a superstition that is believed to keep at bay supernatural beings who haunt theaters and can curse shows, although it usually is turned on only after everyone has left and the venue is empty. During the pandemic lockdown, many theaters kept their ghost lights on in the hope of eventually returning. Thus, once inside the Longacre, you feel as if you’ve walked into some kind of rehearsal that is getting ready to close up for the night.

More than any other of his major works, Shakespeare’s 1606 tragedy invites experimentation of a high order. In the past fifteen years, I’ve seen no fewer than ten adaptations of the Scottish play, including an all-women version that took place at a contemporary girls school, a re-creation of Orson Welles’s radio production, a presentation that required the audience to make its way through a dark heath to get to their seats, one set during the cold war and prominently featuring a bevy of video projections, another occurring inside the head of an institutionalized man, and a mashup with a Japanese manga that moved the action to a blue boxing ring.

Like King Lear, it also attracts big-name star power; among those who have portrayed the thane of Cawdor in New York since 2006 are Sir Patrick Stewart, Ethan Hawke, Sir Kenneth Branagh, Alan Cumming, Liev Schreiber, and Corey Stoll. Now comes James Bond himself, Daniel Craig, in a production helmed by Tony and Obie winner Sam Gold, who is responsible for the much-derided 2019 Broadway revival of Lear with Glenda Jackson in the title role.

Macbeth (Daniel Craig) speaks with a pair of murderers (Danny Wolohan and Michael Patrick Thornton) in Shakespeare adaptation (photo by Joan Marcus)

While the trio, who turn out to be the three witches (portrayed alternately by Phillip James Brannon, Bobbi MacKenzie, Maria Dizzia, Che Ayende, Eboni Flowers, and Peter Smith), continue stirring the pot, Michael Patrick Thornton, who plays the nobleman Lennox, wheels onto the stage and provides a curtain speech about James I’s obsession with witches in the seventeenth century while also asking the audience to, all at once, shout out the name of the show, which is supposed to bring bad luck when spoken inside a theater. Very few people joined in.

Gold has pared down the production to the point where no single actor is the star; there’s an equality among the diverse cast that does not force us to swoon at either Craig or Oscar, Emmy, and Olivier nominee Ruth Negga as Lady Macbeth and instead allows the audience to appreciate the other participants. The text is delivered without many flourishes, as famous lines come and go at a regular pace, with some favorites getting cut; for example, the witches never say, “Double, double toil and trouble.” The actors are dressed in Suttirat Larlarb’s contemporary costumes; Macbeth’s succession from military jacket to paisley bathrobe to fluffy white fur coat is a hoot.

Christine Jones’s set is the antithesis of royalty; the “thrones” are two old, ratty chairs, and the banquet table lacks fancy dinnerware. The crown worn by King Duncan (Paul Lazar) is just plain silly, like a high school prop, but even funnier is when Lazar, following the monarch’s murder, removes his fat suit in front of us and proceeds to play other characters. There is much doubling and tripling of actors, so it’s not always clear who’s who. Amber Gray excels as Banquo and her ghost but is seen later as a gentlewoman. Danny Wolohan is Seyton, a lord, a murderer, and a bloody captain who has lost part of one leg. Emeka Guindo is both Fleance and young Siward. Downtown legend Lazar also shows up as old Siward and the porter, who, in front of the curtain, discusses with Macduff (Grantham Coleman, though I saw understudy Ayende) and Lennox how drink affects sexual prowess. To further the comparison, Macbeth later pops open a can of light beer.

Jeremy Chernick’s special effects feature lots of blood, some of which is added to the simmering soup (along with innards). As Macbeth warns, “Blood will have blood.”

Three witches (Phillip James Brannon, Bobbi MacKenzie, Maria Dizzia) stir up a cauldron of trouble in Macbeth (photo by Joan Marcus)

So what’s it all about? Though uneven, Gold’s adaptation subverts our expectations about stardom, Broadway, and Shakespeare. It’s hard to believe that this is the same story told with such fierce elegance by Joel Coen in his 2021 Oscar-nominated film, The Tragedy of Macbeth, with a dominating Denzel Washington as Macbeth and a haunting Frances McDormand as his devious partner. In fact, under Gold’s supervision, the real standout is Thornton, who relates to the audience with a sweet warmth and playful sense of humor. However, as Macbeth also says, “And nothing is, but what is not.”

Gold (Fun Home; A Doll’s House, Part 2) previously directed Craig (Betrayal, A Steady Rain) as Iago in an intimate and compelling Othello at New York Theatre Workshop and Oscar Isaac in Hamlet at the Public; Negga has played Ophelia at London’s National Theatre and Hamlet at St. Ann’s Warehouse. The ads for Macbeth might push the star draw of this new production, but that is not what Gold is focusing on.

He may not be making any grand statements about lust, greed, and power, but he is investigating the common foibles of humanity, the desires we all have and our considerations of how far we will go to achieve them. Is he completely successful? No, but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t given us an intriguing, provocative, unconventional, absurdly comic, and, yes, highly entertaining production of one of the greatest tragedies ever written.

As Lady Macbeth advises, “What’s done, cannot be undone.”

SHAKESPEARE IN THE PARK BERGEN COUNTY

Who: Black Box PAC
What: Free Shakespeare in Bergen County
Where: Overpeck Park Amphitheater
When: Weekends July 23 – August 29, free, 8:00
Why: New York City has Shakespeare in the Parking Lot’s Two Noble Kinsmen, NY Classical’s King Lear with a happy ending, the Classical Theatre of Harlem’s Seize the King, and the Public Theater’s Shakespeare in the Park presentation of Merry Wives of Windsor. But you can also catch free Bard in New Jersey, where the Black Box Performing Arts Center’s summer season begins this weekend with modern productions of Hamlet and As You Like It, continuing Thursday to Sunday through August 29 at the Overpeck Park Amphitheater in Bergen County. In addition, Black Box PAC will be hosting free “Play On!” concerts Sundays in August at the amphitheater at 4:00, including performances by Divinity & the FAM Band, Melissa Cherie, Esti Mellul, Ginny Lackey & the Hi-Fi Band, Dan Sheehan’s Rising Seas, and Andy Krikun & Jeff Doctorow. There will also be script-in-hand readings of Macbeth and The Taming of the Shrew at the Englewood Public Library on Wednesdays at 8:00 from July 28 to September 1. Admission to all events is free, with no advance RSVP necessary. As Duke Orsino declares in Twelfth Night, “If music be the food of love, play on!”

RETURN ENGAGEMENT: MAC BETH

Lady Macbeth (Ismenia Mendes) reaches out to her royal husband (Isabelle Fuhrman) in inventive reimagining of Shakespeare tragedy (photo by Richard Termine)

Hunter Theater Project
Frederick Loewe Theater at Hunter College
East 68th St. between Lexington & Park Aves.
Monday – Saturday, January 6 – February 22, $49 ($15 for students)
www.huntertheaterproject.org

If you missed Erica Schmidt’s Red Bull Theater production of Mac Beth at the Lucille Lortel Theater in mid-2019, it will be back for a return engagement at the Frederick Loewe Theater at Hunter College as part of the Hunter Theater Project, running January 6 to February 22. Below is my original review of this inventive and engaging work, which features much of the original cast, with Brittany Bradford now as the title character and Dylan Gelula taking over for AnnaSophia Robb.

Erica Schmidt’s beautifully frenetic Shakespeare adaptation Mac Beth — yes, she has made the title two words, perhaps to emphasize the more feminine second half of the title — is an exhilarating demonstration of grrl power, ratcheted up to the nth degree. The Red Bull production is set at a girls school where seven students enact an all-female version of Macbeth. They are dressed in schoolgirl uniforms of buttoned white shirts under tartan tops and skirts, with bloodred socks reaching up to their knees; aggressively ominous and gender-neutral hooded capes are added for the Weird Sisters. (The costumes are by Jessica Pabst.) Catherine Cornell’s set juts into the audience, covered in fake grass with a partially overturned couch, an iron bathtub, a campfire, and water-filled craters, as if the aftermath of a wild sorority bash. (When the characters imbibe, they do so from red plastic cups, a party staple.) And although they speak in the traditional iambic pentameter, they don’t disguise their voices to be more adult, instead sounding like a bunch of kids invigorated by putting on a show exactly the way they want to.

The Weird Sisters (Sharlene Cruz, AnnaSophia Robb, and Sophie Kelly-Hedrick) stir the boiling cauldron in Mac Beth (photo by Richard Termine)

Macbeth (Isabelle Fuhrman) is returning from a successful military campaign with the loyal Banquo (Ayana Workman) when they come upon three witches (AnnaSophia Robb, Sophie Kelly-Hedrick, and Sharlene Cruz, who play multiple roles) who predict that Macbeth will become Thane of Cawdor, then king, while Banquo’s sons will one day rule. Fear, jealousy, and revenge take over as the power grab is on, but with delicious twists; in the Bard’s day, his plays were performed by an all-male cast, but this twenty-first-century all-woman cast — armed with smartphones — revels in the gender shifts without altering the original text. “Are you a man?” Lady Macbeth (Ismenia Mendes) asks her husband. Facing a ghost (hysterically played by Workman), Macbeth declares, “What man dare, I dare: be alive again, / And dare me to the desert with thy sword; / If trembling I inhabit then, protest me / The baby of a girl. Hence, horrible shadow! / Unreal mock’ry, hence!” It’s as if they are caught up in a teenage horror flick, with all the adolescent tropes in place but seen only from the girls’ point of view. Even one of the witches’ prophecies takes on new meaning when she predicts, “Be bloody, bold, and resolute: laugh to scorn / The power of man, for none of woman born / Shall harm Macbeth.” At one point Lady Macbeth tells a witch, “Unsex me here.”

AnnaSophia Robb and Sophie Kelly-Hedrick play witches and other characters in Bard play set at a girls school (photo by Richard Termine)

Schmidt’s (A Month in the Country, Invasion!) breathlessly paced version flies by in a furious ninety minutes, both sexy and sinister, gleefully performed by the terrific cast led by Fuhrman’s (All the Fine Boys, Orphan) tortured Macbeth and Mendes’s (Marys Seacole, Orange Is the New Black) malevolent Lady Macbeth. Robb (The Carrie Diaries, Bridge to Terabithia), NYU Tisch freshman Kelly-Hedrick, and recent CCNY grad Cruz make strong off-Broadway debuts, playing the witches as well as Duncan, Malcolm, Fleance, Rosse, Angus, Lenox, and other minor characters; in particular, Kelly-Hedrick captures the essence of girlhood — tinged with menace — in her squeaky delivery. Schmidt’s inventive staging also boasts a thrilling storm, a creepy doll, and a touch of gymnastics, although if there was one more loud bang against the tub I was going to scream. Schmidt was inspired to revisit Macbeth by reading stories about girls being murdered in the woods. In Mac Beth, she takes back the power, putting the girls in charge in a gender swap that is as exciting as it is, in this day and age, necessary. Schmidt makes us look at the bloody power plays of Scottish kings as if they are the social dominance battles of high school — and vice versa — and every audience member comes out a winner.

CLASSIC STAGE COMPANY: MACBETH

Married couple Nadia Bowers and Corey Stoll star as a sexy married couple with devilish ambitions in Classic Stage adaptation of Macbeth (photo by Joan Marcus)

Classic Stage Company, Lynn F. Angelson Theater
136 East 13th St. between Third & Fourth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through December 15, $82-$127
classicstage.org/shows/macbethcsc

Manhattan native and NYU grad Corey Stoll has quickly become a go-to Shakespearean actor in the city, playing Ulysses in Troilus and Cressida in 2016, Brutus in Julius Caesar in 2017, and Iago in Othello in 2018, all for Shakespeare in the Park at the Delacorte. His easygoing manner brings a compelling humanity to his performances, which also include runs in Law & Order: LA, House of Cards, The Strain, and The Deuce. And that humanity is again evident as he stars as the title character in John Doyle’s streamlined adaptation of the Bard’s Macbeth, continuing at Classic Stage through December 15.

Doyle’s spare set is a rectangular platform with a large wooden throne at one end; above it is a balcony. The actors are always visible, either onstage or standing in the back, watching and waiting. They are dressed in Ann Hould-Ward’s dark Tartan costumes, although it is difficult to tell the individual clans apart or when an actor is playing a different role, as several have multiple parts without costume changes. (The witches are played by most of the company, not a trio of actors.) Lady Macbeth is played by Nadia Bowers (Describe the Night, Life Sucks.), Stoll’s real-life wife, lending a sweet intimacy to their scenes together even as they plot murder most foul. Their sexuality heats up the stage, even as some sly jokes might be a bit much; for example, when Lady Macbeth says, “Come you spirits / That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, / And fill me from the crown to the toe, top-full / Of direst cruelty. Make thick my blood, / Stop up th’access and passage to remorse,” Bowers, sitting on the floor, grabs her crotch in a rather un-Shakespearean manner.

Erik Lochtefeld plays a contemplative Banquo in John Doyle’s Shakespeare adaptation (photo by Joan Marcus)

Barzin Akhavan is a fine Macduff, Erik Lochtefeld a touching Banquo, Tony nominee Mary Beth Peil a quietly regal Duncan, and Raffi Barsoumian a solid Malcolm; the cast also features N’Jameh Camara as Lady Macduff, Barbara Walsh as Ross, and Antonio Michael Woodard as Fleance, but it’s harder for them to establish their characters, who get lost in the shuffle. Tony winner Doyle (Sweeney Todd, Company), the Scottish director who went to school near Cawdor Castle, where much of the play takes place, has trimmed the show to a muddled hundred minutes, sacrificing too much of its necessary building energy as evil ambition overwhelms Macbeth. Even such a flourish as a bowl of water where Macbeth and Lady Macbeth wash the blood off their hands remains onstage too long, going impossibly unseen in front of others.

There are various versions of the Scottish play one can experience now or soon, including the Roundabout’s musical adaptation, Scotland, PA, at the Laura Pels through December 8, the long-running Sleep No More at the McKittrick Hotel, a return engagement of Erica Schmidt’s Red Bull schoolgirl version by the Hunter Theater Project starting in January, and Primary Stages’ Peerless, set in the world of college admissions, next spring. But you won’t go wrong with Stoll, who rises above Doyle’s messy confusion, delivering a compelling and even cathartic Macbeth, who could be any of us, lured in by power. When he says, “Is this a dagger which I see before me, / The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee,” we all see it, and consider reaching for its glittering promise.