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Not Without Ambition, But … Macbeth (an undoing)
A reimagining of Shakespeare, centering Lady Macbeth, asks the wrong questions about her.
When Lady Mac spots a lucky ladybug on her husband’s sleeve, or Macbeth (Adam Best) grumbles “Ah for fuck’s sake” in response to his wife’s demand that he wear his tails for the arrival of King Duncan (Marc Mackinnon), there’s the lively sensation of watching actors improvise around a set of given circumstances: This is the work that often remains invisible — the kind of playful, speculative expansion upon a text that can give depth and contour to the eventual shape seen by the audience. In Harris’s second act, as Lady Macbeth assumes royal command in place of her husband — he’s the one wandering around mumbling and washing his hands — Shakespeare’s language gets moved to the back burner, replaced by something much more heavy-handed. “They were right when they said this play is cursed,” says Lady Macbeth when she at last directly encounters Carlin and her fellow weird sisters, Mae (also Cole) and Missy (Star Penders, who’s the treat of the whole show here and in her role as Duncan’s useless teenage dirtbag son, Malcolm).
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