There is always a choice when staging Shakespeare's Macbeth. It is a violent, bloody play about the usurpation of power and its personal, political and cosmic consequences. A director can emphasize the muscular action or delve into psychology. Trying to do both rarely works.
OSF's new production, opening the 2009 season, goes for the visceral and it works splendidly. The staging is spare and jagged, the violence graphic, the pacing swift. Director Gale Edwards has presented a Scotland that is primitive, volatile and strongly connected to the supernatural.
The cascading consequences of Macbeth are, in fact, no different from the consequences of any power grab, whether a political coup, mafia infighting or a drug cartel turf war. First you co-opt or eliminate the inconvenient witnesses, then you eliminate your potential rivals. That the bloody violence only escalates is a given.
Read the complete review.