This Week's Sneak MacPeek

I mentioned last week that my better half and I were going to see a production of Macbeth. Here's a picture of us in the lobby before the play:

A couple staffers at the theater commended me on my plaid tie for The Scottish Play. My choice was deliberate, although the tie has this one damn spot that I just can't get out.

I can now report that it was a rather unusual reimagining of the Shakespeare play. (SPOILERS AHEAD!)

Graham Abbey as Banquo, Tom McCamus as Macbeth, Lucy Peacock as Lady Macbeth. Photo: David Hou

The company kept the bard's original text (Hecate, Lady MacDuff, and her son, however, are missing from this production), but updated the setting from medieval Scotland to a 1980's biker gang. The three witches are what were called in those days transvestites, and Macbeth's castle is a seedy motel. And yes, the actors do drive motorcycles on stage.

The production employs technical wizardry to appear and vanish witches, ghosts, the dagger Macbeth sees before him, and Birnam Wood on the move. A fiendishly clever scene change between Banquo meeting his end at a gas station (I warned you there would be spoilers!) and Macbeth hosting a cookout earned applause from the audience we were in.

Tom McCamus and Lucy Peacock portrayed Macbeth and his Lady beautifully, although I picture Macbeth as someone young enough to realistically expect siring a son to succeed him someday. Why else would he be distressed by the witches' prediction that his buddy Banquo's offspring would be kings down the road?

(The failure of Banquo's young teenage son to play any part in the drama after Banquo is killed is Shakespeare's fault. Aside from there being no King Fleance at the end, the witches bat 1000 in the prediction biz.)