Photo by Mikki Schaffner.
The Cincinnati Shakespeare Company has brought Macbeth to the stage again, but with a twist. Like its countless other productions, the theater company always looks to put a unique twist on classic plays, and this time around Macbeth is set in the early days of the Cold War, an adaptation that deals with the boundaries between free will and control.
Set in the early days of the conflict between Western democracies and the Soviet Union, this re-imagination of The Scottish Play focuses on ambition, mind control, and psychological manipulation rather than the supernatural of a typical Macbeth production. Macbeth (Darnell Pierre Benjamin) and his wife (Hayley Guthrie) fall into an endless pursuit of dominance after three witches (Sara Mackie, Elizabeth Chin Molloy, and Aiden Sims) reveal a prophecy of power to them.
Photo by Mikki Schaffner.
As Macbeth and his wife’s paranoia intensifies, fracturing their reality, their descent into madness leads to an exploration of just how far the human mind can be pushed, and explores who is pulling the strings in the story. Cincy Shakes’s adaptation of Macbeth immerses the audience in a world where the edge of insanity is closer than it appears.
“In my experience with Macbeth productions and analyses, I’ve noticed a tendency to emphasize the play’s supernatural elements,” director Christopher V. Edwards says of his reimagining. “While these dark, seemingly omnipotent forces do create a palpable sense of fear and loss of control over our lives and destinies, I believe their impact is less significant than the realities of human capacity for evil.”
Photo by Mikki Schaffner.
This isn’t Edwards’s first rodeo leading a classic for Cincy Shakes—he previously directed productions of Shakespeare’s Othello as well as Raisin in the Sun and Fences. He is currently artistic rirector at the Actors’ Shakespeare Project in Boston and founder of Artistic Director Point of Entry Theater in New York City, an educational theater dedicated to telling multicultural stories for underserved populations.
Throughout his career, Edwards has worked to bring contemporary aesthetics to classical works—most of his work being focused on Shakespeare. He heightens these classic texts and stories by including elements of hip-hop to bring these stories into a contemporary light
Edwards described this production of Macbeth as blending a Shakespearean tragedy with Cold War paranoia, which was all used as a jumping-off point for the production. Edwards found inspiration for the reimagining from Mk-Ultra and similar Cold War conspiracies to create a mind-bending Macbeth that looks into the dangers of ambition and power grounded in history.
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