‘Macbeth’
In the 2023 production of Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” at the Donmar Warehouse in London, directed by Max Webster, an unusual request was made of audience members as they entered the theater: Wear headphones.
The actors, too, wore headsets, their quips, shouts and whispers transmitted digitally into the audience’s ears, at times alternating between the left and right earphones. Writing for The New York Times, the critic Houman Barekat said that “the transmitted audio imbues the words with an added richness and immediacy.” The production conjures “just enough novelty,” he added, “to freshen things up, while still ensuring that the text remains center stage — in all its timeless glory.”
Luckily for Shakespeare fans, the show, which was nominated for three Olivier awards, including best revival, best actor and best sound design, was recorded live.
From Barekat’s critical notebook, which praised David Tennant’s turn as Macbeth, a “gaunt, energetic bundle of angst”:
Tennant, with his slim-line physique and withdrawn, vaguely haunted-looking face, has a more expressive emotional energy that lends itself to treacherous intrigue and anguished remorse alike. He is frantic, almost from the get-go.
The N.Y.C. Fringe Festival
Each year, the New York City Fringe Festival, presented by the nonprofit theater company Frigid, uses a lottery system to randomly select the plays it produces, giving less established theater makers a chance to stage their work.
This year, the festival is running April 2-20, but you don’t have to be in Manhattan to take in the lineup. A large number of performances are available to livestream from home, including Jenn Howd and Roz Mihalko’s campy musical, “Texas Annie: The Legend of the Moan Ranger,” which follows the adventures of a renegade sex toy dealer in Texas; Azhar Bande-Ali’s comedy “Bad Muslim”; and Joanna M. Briley’s “Swipe This! My Life in Transit,” about the lonely life of a token booth clerk.
And, continuing the festival’s anti-gatekeeper ethos, 100 percent of box office proceeds go directly to the participating artists.
‘Death of England: The Plays’
A Londoner in mourning over the death of his pro-Brexit father. A Black working-class man in crisis as his girlfriend readies to give birth. A family grieving the loss of their shop.
These three interconnected plays, which can be watched as a series or a stand-alone experience, examine the divisions wrought by Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union in 2016. This 2024 staging, filmed at the theater @sohoplace in London, stars a slew of buzzy TV names, including Thomas Coombes (“Baby Reindeer”), Erin Doherty (“The Crown”) and Paapa Essiedu (“I May Destroy You”) as the grieving son Michael.
Together, the three dramas explore race, class, colonialism and cancel culture, but also the joys and challenges of what it means to be British today (or a human during any time of political tumult).
From Matt Wolf’s review of the 2020 production:
Through it all, Michael attempts to accommodate the memory of a man about whom he feels as divided as the country in the play’s title. … You have to hand it to the creative team — not least the hardworking sound designers Pete Malkin and Benjamin Grant — for carrying a full-on assault of this sort straight across the finish line, to co-opt the language of sports deployed by the play.
