Wayne & Shuster’s Shakespearean Slapstick

1954-1991

Canadian comedy duo Johnny Wayne and Frank Shuster produced a series of television adaptations of Shakespeare. Various forms of the Wayne & Shuster show were staples on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s (CBC’s) Saturday evening television programming from the 1950s through to the late 1980s, and they have been occasionally rebroadcast as specials since the 1990s on both CBC and The Comedy Network. Read More

Macbeth Mutfakta (Macbeth in the Kitchen)

Tamdoğan, Burak 2013

Kadro Pa’s Macbeth Mutfakta is a postdramatic experiment with Shakespeare’s Macbeth and represents an example of object theatre as the actor Simge Günsan tells the story of Shakespeare’s play by a table using various kitchen utensils and vegetables to suggest the characters of Shakespeare’s play. The play is interactive as Günsan tells the audience that she will be cooking menemen by using chopped vegetables which represent dead characters. The mention of menemen can be taken as a culture-specific item introducing a famous dish of Turkish cuisine. All characters are represented with a specific utensil in the production quite creatively. Read More

Macbeth/İki Kişilik Kâbus (Macbeth/A Nightmare for Two)

Akal, Doğu; Aydın, Elif 2016

Macbeth/İki Kişilik Kâbus by Tiyatro BeReZe premiered in İstanbul in 2016 and it has been performed in various theatres in Turkey and abroad as part of international theatre festivals. The founders of Tiyatro BeReZe, Erkan Uyanıksoy and Elif Temuçin reduce the number of actors in Macbeth to two and perform as the Macbeth couple. Directed by Doğu Akal, the couple is domesticated to a great extent with a scenery representing their bedroom and scenes depicting the intimate moments of both characters suffering from insomnia and drinking coffee. Read More

Mendoza [adaptation of Macbeth]

Carrillo, Juan 2016

Mendoza is an adaptation of William Shakespeare’s tragedy Macbeth. Antonio Zúñiga and Juan Carrillo created a new play by setting the story in the Mexican Revolution of the early 1900s and giving the characters Mexican names. The play performed by actors in the Los Colochos Teatro company and directed by Juan Carrillo premiered in 2012. The full video linked on this page is from a 2016 performance and available courtesy of Los Colochos Teatro via their YouTube channel. Read More

7 Şekspir Müzikali (7 Shakespeares Musical)

Aydoğan, Kemal 2009-2011

Building upon Jacques’ theatrum mundi trope, 7 Şekspir Müzikali visualises the seven ages of man from cradle to grave. Being a collection of several excerpts from different translators, including those made by the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA) alum Haluk Bilginer (1954-…) himself, the musical is built upon Bilginer’s almost one person performance where the rest of the cast as female fools accompany his dancing and singing through a well-choreographed pace. Performing all seven stages of man singlehandedly by referring to social and theatrical issues alike, Bilginer displays his great acting and life-long love relationship with Shakespeare in this almost two-hour musical. Read More

İkinci Katil (The Second Murderer) – Macbeth

Erdenk, Barış 2017-2018

Serhat Yiğit’s İkinci Katil (2017-2018), performed by the Ankara State Theatre, is an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Macbeth and is reminiscent of Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (1966), by focusing on minor characters and their otherwise disregarded and peripheral microcosms. However, different from the post-modern self-reflexivity of Stoppard’s play, Yiğit uses an Aristotelian model in his play. Read More

La tragedia de Macbeth (The Tragedy of Macbeth)

Amalio López, Pedro 1966

Full video is available courtesy of Radiotelevisión Española (RTVE). Please note that Televisión Española (TVE) was renamed RTVE from 1980.​

https://www.rtve.es/alacarta/videos/estudio-1/estudio-1-macbeth/1770473/

Adapter or translator: Pedro Amalio López (free adaptation based on José María Rincón’s version)
TV program (or series): “Estudio 1”
Aired on September 28, 1966.

Starring Francisco Piquer (Macbeth), Irene Gutiérrez Caba (Lady Macbeth), Tomás Blanco (Macduff), José María Escuer (Banquo), Julio Núñez (Malcolm).

 


Production is curated by Jesús Tronch, professor titular (Senior Lecturer) at the University of Valencia, where he teaches English literature and creative translation.

Macbeth

Mallik, Nilanko 2019

A modern adaptation of Macbeth by William Shakespeare was directed by Dr. Nilanko Mallik and performed by Shakespeare Youth Performances (SYP) in Kolkata, India on the 1st of June 2019, Saturday.

SYP’s adaptation takes the plot of fight for kingship to fight for becoming the CEO of an MNC – Dunsinane Corp. Inverness, Cawdor, Fife, even Birnam – are all branches of this great MNC, whose CEO is Duncan, murdered by his cousin Macbeth.

In this production, the witches appealed to the audience through their charming music. Although they retain some of their mysterious elements, they were presented as a band of three sisters – who run their own catering service for a living – and take to music as their passion. The famous enchantment of the witches in the cauldron scene (Act IV, Scene I) was rendered to highly grooving, foot-tapping rap song, sung with the aid of a guitar.

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Shakespeare in Yemen

Hazaber, Amin; Hennessey, Katherine 2018

In a land ravaged by strife and violence, actors and poets search for hope and inspiration in the words of the world’s greatest playwright. In this short documentary, Yemeni actors and actresses perform some of Shakespeare’s most famous lines, and a Yemeni poet recites a qasidah inspired by a Shakespearean sonnet. Why Shakespeare? Why Yemen, and why now? Watch and find out. Read More

Macbeth

Cardoso, João Paulo Ceara 2001

Darkness and red lighting kicks off the murderous and phantasmagorical mood in this puppet theatre production of Macbeth. Although hardly noticeable in the video recording, a horde of idle, motionless puppets furnish the venue, surrounding the audience – and like the audience and like Macbeth, look on, unable to dissuade fate. Puppeteering is, on many levels, a rather fitting form of staging the Scottish Thane-Become-King. Read More

Mickey B

Magill, Tom 2007 | 5 Comments

Mickey B (2007) A feature film adaptation of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, written and performed by serving prisoners inside Maghaberry Prison in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Read More

Shakespeare Must Die

Kanjanavanit, Ing (Ing K) 2012

Shakespeare Must Die | a Thai vision of William Shakespeare’s  Macbeth | Jai Singh Films presents SHAKESPEARE MUST DIE – an Ing K/Manit Sriwanichpoom production – in association with the Ministry of Culture Film Fund – a Thai adaptation of William Shakespeare’s ‘The Tragedy of Macbeth’ Although the Thai government’s Ministry of Culture initially helped fund director Ing K’s adaptation of Macbeth, entitled Shakespeare Must Die (2012), the film failed to the meet the censorship board’s approval. In April 2012, the film was officially banned, and the director Ing K (Ing Kanjanavanit) and producer, Manit Sriwanichpoom, immediately filed an appeal. Over a year later, the saga continues, but they continue to fight for the release of their film. Read More

Macbeth

Chen, Dalian 2016

In 2016 to commemorate the 400th anniversary of William Shakespeare’s death, the Chong Qing Theatre Company staged a new experimental production of the tragic play Macbeth. This adaptation written by Cai Fujun from the Art Institute of Fu Jian Province features only three performers, and the setting is a slaughterhouse which includes a pool of water in the center surrounded by a raised platform and thick chains hanging from the ceiling. Macbeth is played by a woman while Lady Macbeth is played by a man. However, their roles are reversed twice over the course of the play. A third actor plays the roles of Banquo, Macduff, and Fleance. The three witches do not appear on stage, but their voices are heard delivering the prophesies. The deaths of Duncan and Macbeth are represented by the running of electric saws with sparks flying. Read More

Bruxas da Escócia (The Witches of Scotland)

Brandini, Ângelo 2014

Bruxas da Escócia (The Witches from Scotland) is Vagalum Tum Tum Theatre Company’s fourth stage adaptation of Shakespeare for children. In the same approach of Vagalum’s earlier comedic adaptations, Bruxas da Ecócia amalgamates physical theatre, clowning and, Commedia dell’Arte techniques with Shakespeare’s narrative. In acrobatic numbers, clowns enact and embody Shakespeare’s play physically so that it communicates easily with a young audience. Macbeth is a clumsy and irresolute general married to a very determined and scheming Lady Macbeth. The actors explore the double side of the protagonist well: brave and coward; ambitious and yet hesitant to succumb to evil. Moving up from the title of The King’s Best Friend to Monarch, Macbeth suffers through some shameful and humorous situations. The tragic elements of Shakespeare’s text are transformed through the lens of the clown and yet retain the fundamental themes of the source text. Macbeth’s victims are catapulted to their deaths, the forest moves and is treated as a character and the vibrant music, composed by Fernando Escrich, is played and sung onstage by Vagalum’s resourceful actors. Read More

Macbeth

Rodríguez, Jesusa 2002

In her production of Macbeth, director Jesusa Rodríguez—a prolific Mexican artist, playwright and activist—links the play with several debates and fears of our time. This performance, intense and daring from the onset—although also very uneven, often pointlessly strident—opens with the lines “Macbeth has murdered sleep”. Insomnia and nightmares will become a central theme throughout the production: we see Lady Macbeth taking sleep pills, while Macbeth turns on the T. V. during the night. Three maids, who are later revealed to be the Weird Sisters, clean the bedroom of the couple and polish Macbeth’s shoes frantically, as if they intended to leave everything spotlessly clean, echoing Lady Macbeth’s obsession. Read More

Macbeth

Teixeira, Ana 2004

Macbeth is a bloodstained drama, drowned in darkness, trespassed by screams of horror. The play is surrounded by a thick mist, where the apparitions confuse the reality of things and the forces of evil, relentlessly invoked, materialized in terrible ways. Read More

Macbeth

Goldberg, Andrew; Tiffany, John 2012

From the National Theatre of Scotland comes a one-man production of William Shakespeare’s play Macbeth. Directed by John Tiffany and Andrew Goldberg, this re-imagined production is set in a psychiatric unit. This performance is approximately one hour and 45 minutes, with no intermission. Read More

Macbeth, herói bandido (Macbeth, the Bandit-Hero)

Fagundes, Patricia 2004

Macbeth, herói bandido (2004) is a stage production of Shakespeare’s Macbeth (1606), produced by Cia. Rústica (Rustic Theatre Company), an autonomous theatre ensemble based in Porto Alegre, in the state of Rio Grande do Sul. It is one of the most active and prolific troupes in the city, promoting relevant research projects and award-winning theatre shows. Read More

Killbeth

Koh, Sun-Woong 2011

Killbeth is a martial arts theater based on Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Using martial arts and actions, the production captures and expresses the characteristics of the original’s dynamic energy and spectacular power. By changing witches into a blind psychic and presenting an old Buddhist monk, Killbeth highlights Korean sentiments. Read More

Macbeth, the Scottish Play

Galdino, Regina 2008 | 4 Comments

The stark minimalism of the staging of Macbeth, the Scottish Play (Macbeth, a Peça Escocesa) does not affect the quality of its performance. Performing with the bare minimum, the actors were at home with the text and knew how to communicate it well to the audience. The bareness of the stage also helps to accentuate the eeriness and other-worldly quality of the weird sisters. Read More

Trono de Sangue (Throne of Blood/Macbeth)

Antunes Filho, José Alves 1992 | One Comment

Trono de Sangue (Throne of Blood/Macbeth), the title of Brazilian director Antunes Filho’s staging of the Shakespearean tragedy, refers explicitly to Akira Kurosawa’s film, and puts into relief its intermedial characteristics. The director carried his well-known devotion to the cinema into the aesthetics of spectacle which resulted in a beautiful visual achievement with clear references to Noh Theatre. Read More

Macbeth

Cruz, Ulysses 1992 | 2 Comments

Described as “a disturbing reflexion on power”, the Brazilian stage production of Macbeth toured many cities in Brazil in 1992 and became a commercial success despite the negative reviews. Read More

Macbeth

Kurita, Yoshihiro 2006

Ryutopia Noh Theatre (Niigata): 31/1/06-3/2/06, Umewaka Noh Theatre (Tokyo): 4/2/06-12/2/06, Nagoya Noh Theatre (Nagoya): 14/2/06-15/2/06 Read More

Macbeth

Kurita, Yoshihiro 2007

Ryutopia Noh Theatre (Niigata): 29/3/07-31/3/07 (In the memory of Niigata City, becoming the ordinance-designed city), National Noh Theatre (Tokyo): 3/4/07-5/4/07 (In the memory of Niigata City, becoming the ordinance-designed city) Read More

Macbeth

Kurita, Yoshihiro 2004

23/5/04-30/5/04 – Ryutopia Noh Theatre, Niigata, Japan and 5/6/04-6/6/04 – Tessenkai Noh Theatre, Tokyo, Japan Read More

Macbeth

Goold, Rupert 2010

Director Rupert Goold’s gripping stage production of Macbeth was filmed for television at the end of 2009. Patrick Stewart in his triumphant, Tony-nominated performance as the ambitious general, and Tony-nominated Kate Fleetwood as his coldly scheming wife. Read More

Maqbool (Macbeth)

Bharadwaj, Vishal 2003

Maqbool is based on William Shakespeare’s Macbeth, with the Mumbai underworld as its backdrop. Maqbool (Irrfan Khan) is the right-hand man of Jahangir Khan (alias Abba Ji) (Pankaj Kapoor), a powerful underworld don. Maqbool is grateful and feels a close connection and personal indebtedness to Abba Ji. Seeing their close relationship, but also sensing Maqbool’s ambition, two corrupt policemen (Om Puri and Naseeruddin Shah) predict that Maqbool will soon take over the reins of the Mumbai Underworld from Abba Ji. Read More

Macbeth

Perng, Ching-hsi

Part of the Shashibiya Mingju Donghua (Animated Shakespeare) series.

Ma ke bo si

Li, Zibo; Xu, Xiaozhong 1980

In the 1980 Macbeth, Xu Xiaozhong, another 1950s Moscow-trained director, drew a parallel between the socialist new China and the Renaissance idealized by Engels. Xu’s vision of Macbeth was as “a giant” who “wanders, stumbles and eventually drowns in … whirlpools of blood.” [Note 9] The “giant” image derived from Engels, and the image of “stumbling” came from Marx’s description of Louis Napoleon. [Note 10] Xu followed Shakespeare in showing that Macbeth “is destroyed by his own individual ambition.” Xu’s interpretation emphasized, however, that Macbeth had the potential to become a revered national hero. Yet Macbeth, in addition to ruining himself, ruined his country: “Macbeth is also a tragedy of the people. Shakespeare reveals that a careerist and tyrant like Macbeth can bring disaster to his ancestral land and its people” (Xu Xiaozhong 1996, 243). Citing Marx and Soviet Shakespeareans, Xu declared: “Shakespeare not only wrote a tragedy about an individual, it was more a tragedy of history at a turning point” (1996, 240).

In China, theatre is expected to propagandize the government’s policies, and there were suggestions that Xu’s production represented an attack on the “Gang of Four” whose trial was then in progress. Although this would have been politically astute, Xu rejected such “high praise.” Xu had a strong social consciousness and wanted to deal with the serious questions facing China. As a sincere believer in Marx and Engels’s writings on realism, he would not simply echo current Party propaganda. Nor, however, was he content with Kott’s idea of “Shakespeare our contemporary,” since Xu accepted Marx’s view that dramatic characters should not be reduced to “mere mouthpieces of the spirit of the times.” Nonetheless, striking parallels emerged through Xu’s staging between Macbeth and the leaders, not excluding Mao himself, whose hubris had been responsible for so many disasters in China.

 

Macbeth

Chandradasan 2002

An eco political performance based on the play by William Shakespeare for Lokadharmi, 2002. Read More

Kingdom of Desire

Wu, Hsing-kuo 1986 | One Comment

During the Eastern Chou Dynasty of the Warring State when feudalism was at its peak. The nation of Chi fell prey to the greed and ambitions of the Lord Chancellor, Wei Lie-Bo. East City Defender, Au-Shu, and his deputy, Meng, were called upon to settle the disputes. Read More

Makebai furen (Lady Macbeth)

Cao, Ping 2001

Makebai furen (Lady Macbeth) is an adaptation of Macbeth from Taiwan. The 2001 production featured Tian Mansha as Lady Macbeth and actors from the Sichuan Youth Chuanju Opera Company and was directed by Cao Ping. Read More

Makbet

Estrella, Josefina 1999

Makbet is Filipino adaptation of Shakespeare’s Macbeth set in a Cordilleran village.

 

 

Lady Macbeth

Han, Tae-sook 1999

Lady Macbeth is an experimental theatre adaptation of Macbeth designed by Lee Kwang-sup and directed by Han Tae-sook. The production was performed by the Theatre Company Mooli at the Jayu Theatre of the Seoul Art Center October 2-15, 1999. It first premiered in 1998 and was reproduced in 1999, 2000, and 2008.

The story is presented through a process in which a doctor uses hypnosis to treat Lady Macbeth, who is suffering from delusion, hysteria and somnambulism, showing us the inner world of Lady Macbeth through her subconsciousness. Read More

Metal Macbeth

Inoue, Hidenori 2006

“A metal band in the 80’s and a Mad Max-like near future intermingle in an eye-opening “New Macbeth”! In the year 2206, after innumerable slayings and destructions, a heath littered with dead bodies and rubble was left. Three eerie witches manifest themselves in front of an invincible General Randomstar that ESP Kingdom is proud of. They leave a prophecy saying, “All of your future is scripted in this compact disc”. It was a CD made by a heavy metal band named “Metal Macbeth” whose prime was in the 80s”. Read More

Macbeth

Ninagawa, Yukio 1985

Yukio Ninagawa’s iconic production of Macbeth in the Netherlands and U.K. in 1985 (premiered in Tokyo in 1980) Read More

Noh Macbeth

Izumi, Noriko 2006

The noh Macbeth production was created by professional Noh actors, to be performed for people who already understand the Noh conventions. It was not an experimental fusion theatre targeting Shakespeare scholars who are unfamiliar with Japanese classics. Not all Japanese people can read the Noh scripts either.

Curse of the Golden Flower

Zhang, Yimou 2006

In 928 A.D. a power struggle emerges in the palace of China’s emperor (Chow Yun-Fat). A cruel man, he is secretly having his wife (Gong Li) poisoned with a substance that will eventually drive her insane. Meanwhile the empress is having an affair with Prince Wan (Ye Liu), her husband’s son from a previous marriage. But the prince secretly wishes to run away with Chan (Li Man), the daughter of the imperial doctor. Read More