About the Show

Seven girls hurl headlong into the unchecked passions of "Macbeth" as the line between real life and bloody fantasy quickly blurs. An encore staging of Red Bull's new adaptation of Shakespeare's tragedy.

On an autumn afternoon, in an empty lot outside the city, seven girls meet up to do a play. School uniform tartan transforms in this American urban wasteland. The girls are witches, ghosts, and kings. Through prophecies and smartphones, unexpected resonances emerge from Shakespeare’s dark nightmare of ambition gone awry. These young women discover what's done cannot be undone.

Critic Reviews (31)

"When Teenage Angst Turns Bloody: Schoolgirl savagery is at the center of Erica Schmidt’s inventive adaptation of Shakespeare’s play."
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"Erica Schmidt's Psychologically Intriguing 'MAC BETH' Moves Uptown"
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Score: 97% "Once upon a time, three girls went into the forest but only two came out. In Erica Schmidt's brilliant adaptation of Shakespeare's 'Macbeth' you will discover how that could be."
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"This is among the most passionate versions of the play ever performed. Chief among the main players is the impressive Brittany Bradford, who smartly captures Macbeth's almost quicksilver transition from meek but loyal nobleman to halfheartedly ambitious throne-grabber."
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For a previous production

"An adaptation...that with its all-female cast becomes a raucous, sometimes impish, very dark-edged revel...Fuhrman puts a studious teen’s spin on her contemplative Macbeth, while an irrepressible mischief lurks within Mendes’s wonderful Lady Macbeth, toggling between passion and playfulness...What’s powerful in this play isn’t its climax. It’s watching a group of girls meet Shakespeare on their own electric terms — with ferocity, abandon and the occasional wild dance break."
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For a previous production

"Equally giggly and grisly...Alternates between heightened high jinks and chilling violence. At first, you may chuckle at these bad girls’ adolescent antics...even as Macbeth and her wife (standout Ismenia Mendes) go on an ambition-fueled rampage of destruction...The production works better when it veers into horror territory...The bloody savagery that these fresh-faced girls are capable of inflicting on each other is hard to wash off your mind."
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For a previous production

"The stage is awash in concept, but the real, visceral stakes of the story at hand can be neither seen nor felt...Schmidt is so enamored of her big idea that she allows her actors to gallop through the text of 'Macbeth' as if it has nothing to offer but basic structure and forward motion...The characters they’re enacting inside Shakespeare’s play blur together, a mess of casual, hyper, contemporary gestures that never let us take the story seriously."
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For a previous production

"The giddy, irreverent pace and edited text help offset the inevitable stylistic trade-off: not all the actors are giving a Banquo, Macduff or King Duncan for the ages (whatever that might be)...The playing of the lead roles is generally appealing, but uneven...I wanted more 'Macbeth' on the cutting-room floor, more material about the students’ lives, less fidelity to the Jacobean source."
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Trailer

Creative team