Memo to Democratic presidential candidates: If you’re looking for a bangin’ track for your inauguration ball, Beyoncé’s “Bow Down” will really get the party started. I’ve seen many Macbeths in my time (and even performed in one in high school), but I’ve never seen a more a joyous coronation scene than the one on stage at the Lucille Lortel Theater, in director/adapter Erica Schmidt’s all-female Mac Beth for the Red Bull Theater. It must be the Bey factor.
Come to think of it, the song’s “Bow down bitches” refrain might send the wrong message in modern-day politics. But it’s perfectly suited to the schoolgirl-and-smartphone world Schmidt evokes in her fearless 100-minute Shakespearean update, which premiered at Seattle Rep in 2018.
Schmidt’s premise is this: Seven teenage girls in tartan-accented school uniforms—cue the Catholic school flashbacks—perform the Scottish play in an overgrown empty lot. They’ve come prepared, their backpacks packed with props, but everything they use is modern and ordinary. The three witches (AnnaSophia Robb, Sophie Kelly-Hedrick, and Sharlene Cruz) pilfer ingredients for their brew from science lab. They feast on junk food and twist-top wine: Lady Macbeth (Ismenia Mendes) greets King Duncan (Cruz) with a pack of Twizzlers, and later serves her guests a bag of Cheetos and a bottle of cheap red—which comes in handy when a blood-soaked Banquo (Ayana Workman) makes an appearance at dinner. She reads the “they met me in the day of success” letter from Macbeth (Isabelle Fuhrman) on her phone.
[Read David Finkle’s ★★ review here.]
What’s more—they don’t alter themselves in any way. Fuhrman has long hair; she doesn’t tie it up or pull it back to play Macbeth. The same goes for Mendes—who makes an impressively sympathetic Lady Macbeth—and Lily Santiago as Macduff, aka Macbeth’s nemesis (remember: Macduff wasn’t “of woman born”; he was “from his mother’s womb/ Untimely ripp’d”).
And because we’re clearly watching women, certain dialogue is more powerful than ever. Take the scene when Macduff learns that his wife and children have been “savagely slaughter’d.” (We don’t witness the murder of Lady Macduff and her kids; that’s one of many judicious cuts that Schmidt makes to get the play into the intermission-free zone. Some might argue that not seeing the slaughter robs the subsequent scene of its gravity, but I disagree. And apparently that scene has been getting cut since the mid-1700s.) Here, Santiago turns Macduff’s reaction—“He has no children”—into a primal scream. It’s gutting. Duncan’s son Malcolm (Kelly-Hedrick) offers this measured advice: “Dispute it like a man.” Macduff concurs: “I shall do so/ But I must also feel it like a man.” I’ve never seen this exchange infused with such depth of emotion.
We all know things come to a bloody end for Macbeth, and this Mac Beth takes things even further. (Also in those overstuffed backpacks: very large butcher knives.) Whether the extra bit of made-for-Instagram violence works might depend on your tolerance for blood. Or horror flicks. Or it might depend on your knowledge of high school–age young women—a number of whom were at the performance I attended. Clearly, this Mac Beth was on the level.
Mac Beth opened May 19, 2019, at the Lucille Lortel Theatre and runs through June 9. Tickets and information: redbulltheater.com
