There are a million ways to put on William Shakespeare’s “Macbeth,” and of those, there are many ways to do it wrong. Anyone familiar with the show likely knows the usual problems: making it too boring, too flashy, too on-the-nose, too off-base, etc. It’s a brilliant piece of literature, and yet, very easy to mess up.
This was what ran through my mind as I waited in the foyer of Alpha Delta Phi (ADPhi) for the house to open. “Macbeth” is perhaps my favorite of Shakespeare’s works, and while I did have high hopes for this rendition of the play, I was truthfully rather skeptical. Could this cast and crew really put a fresh, exciting, and faithful spin on the 400-year-old script?
I can genuinely say, with my full strength of character, that my answer was yes. Spike Tape’s rendition of “Macbeth” that ran from Thursday, April 17, to Saturday, April 19, was incredible. Truly, I say that with no sugar-coating or fluffing up for which The Argus is somewhat infamous. It was one of the best pieces of student theater I’ve seen in my time at the University (if not my outright favorite). Everything was phenomenal, from the staging to the soundscape, from the acting to the props.
Co-directors Noah King ’25 and Sophia Flynn ’25, alongside stage manager Sophie Brusini ’26, tackled Shakespeare’s classic tale through a lens of toxic masculinity and gender roles. King said the inspiration for this adaptation came out of coverage of the 2024 U.S. Presidential election, when he saw young male voters tell a reporter they were voting for Trump because of Joe Rogan’s endorsement.
“I was like, ‘Why are you going off Joe Rogan’s endorsement?’” King said. “‘How did that sway you?’ And then I thought about ideas around these masculine [public figures] in our culture—people like Joe Rogan, Andrew Tate—and then I read ‘Macbeth.’”
With the intersection of masculinity and politics so fresh on his mind, the Scottish tragedy took on a new meaning for King.
“I’m reading these scenes where Lady Macbeth is emasculating Macbeth to convince him to kill Duncan [Simon Sidney ’27], and I’m like, ‘This isn’t a show solely about mysticism or fate or power,’” King said. “It’s also so much about masculinity, about gender expectation. I thought it would be really unique to do the show through a lens of a Trump administration—of a hyper-masculine political environment and how that ideology facilitates violence in the show.”
As he began to develop his idea, he asked Flynn to join the project, initially as assistant director. As the process moved forward, however, Flynn’s involvement in the production kept increasing until eventually the pair decided to become co-directors.
“Then I promoted myself,” Flynn said. “We were having lunch with A.J. [Minzer ’25], and I was like, ‘Noah, I’m coming to all the rehearsals, can I just be co-director?’ And then we shook on it, and it was beautiful.”
Flynn has an eye for making the centuries-old script accessible to a contemporary audience, as evidenced by her unique interpretation of “A Game of Love and Chance.” Reading the script of “Macbeth,” she found all the places where hyper-masculine violence and rhetoric were present, but often lost in previous performances of the play.
One thing that Flynn and King did that set their production apart was opening the show with blood-pumping fight choreography. This scene, not explicitly in the original text, immediately hooks the audience and makes them extremely aware of the violent masculinity to come.
“I think recontextualizing it in a way that looks and sounds familiar to the audience helps them understand what’s happening,” Flynn said. “If you were listening to the text today, [the first battle] gets lost in this big, chunky monologue. But it’s such a great way for the audience to connect with how visceral the text actually is, because sometimes when you’re listening to Shakespeare, it’s hard to understand the real emotions or meaning behind it.”
Flynn’s observation is correct—it’s no secret that Shakespeare’s words often go in one ear and out the other, even to an avid reader of his work. By directing the play to resonate with modern audiences, King and Flynn could explore and deconstruct some of the primary elements of its narrative.
“We set up a pretty strong framework to start with,” Flynn said. “So that way, once we got to [questions like] ‘What is Banquo’s ghost?’ or ‘What is Birnam Wood?’ We asked, ‘How does it fit into this structure of things and language that we’re already using?’ Which was cool; it was nice to have such a strong idea to work on.”
Indeed, building off this framework allowed fantastic and unique interpretations—such as the ghost of Banquo (played by Elijah Leshnick ’25) appearing first in an ethereal negligee and later, during the banquet scene, in a wedding dress, planting a solemn kiss on Macbeth’s lips.
This show really shone where Flynn and King’s direction met with fantastic performances by the cast. Jacob Carton ’25, who played the titular Macbeth, brought a level of visceral power to the role that frankly left me terrified in my seat. Speaking with Carton a few days after closing night, his passion for this interpretation of the story and the character was palpable.
“Fascism oftentimes relies on violence and youthfulness,” Carton said. “This role can be this embodiment of a really neurotic, frenetic, almost feral manifestation of masculinity that we’d like to think, inside of neoliberal political spheres, is done. We’d like to think we’re at that point…but I actually think that it’s really hiding beneath the surface.”
Carton connected his own characterization back to young male Trump voters in 2024 and the potential energy, anger, and danger that hypermasculinity offers.
“These young men that wear their masculinity on their sleeve, they feel like they’ve hit a certain age where they’ve gotten strong, they feel like they can show that and display, and then they don’t know how to use their bodies in a trained way,” Carton said. “It’s almost like they’re bursting with energy, and it’s very volatile.”
Now, as anyone even slightly familiar with the Scottish play will know, Macbeth’s story would be nothing without his wife, Lady Macbeth. Maya Gray ’25, in a truly standout performance, gave us a bone-chilling rendition of the character.
“[There were two things] that I decoded in the language that I’d never noticed before,” Gray said. “One, that Lady Macbeth is a lot more nervous than people think she is. I certainly think there are a lot of lines that people just take as her being a cold-hearted person.”
Reading the script with fresh eyes for this production, Gray also noticed how Lady Macbeth’s sense of power is connected to control over her husband.
“She doesn’t really do anything without Macbeth,” Gray said. “The second that she loses power over Macbeth, she’s nothing. That’s when she loses her mind and goes insane. So I kind of wanted to also play really with, ‘Where are moments that she is genuinely nervous?’ and, ‘Where are moments that she is actually able to assert herself, if any?’”
Gray’s interpretation of Lady Macbeth’s gendered position in the narrative rang perfectly with Carton’s performance and King and Flynn’s direction. As she tapped her blood-red French tipped nails on a table behind Pi Café, she told me about how she read masculinity and femininity into the character.
“In all of her words, one of her first lines is, ‘Unsex me here,’” Gray said. “She wants to be this agender being, but she can’t. She doesn’t have the power of a man. She never will. So then, she basically just goes the opposite way, figuring out the ways to use her femininity to get her where she wants to go.”
I cannot laud Gray’s performance enough. She deserves her flowers and then some for this role, from her manic “Out, damn spot!” monologue to her forceful “Screw your courage to the sticking place!” scene. What she saw, the audience saw. What she felt, the audience felt. It was a true masterclass.
Gray and Carton were not alone in her outstanding performance. Every member of this cast brought their A-Game, from Kekoa Dowsett ’28 as a sorrowful vengeful Macduff and Iza Konings ’26 as a determined and strong-willed Malcolm, to Percy Liftin-Harris ’28 as a steadfast Ross and Matilda Ledger ’28 as a loyal servant to the Macbeths.
Especially of note was the performance of the three witches, Nolan Lewis ’25, Abigail Grauer ’27, and Avi Kahtan ’28. King and Flynn’s interpretation had the three witches as drag performers, who delivered their iconic “Double, double toil and trouble” scene at the opening of Act IV as if it was a show you’d attend in a drag bar, replete with hundred-dollar Macbeth Bucks bearing Carton’s face. Rather than delivering the lines straight up, the trio was lip syncing to their own pre-recorded voices on a track produced by Lewis.
“In the text, [the witches’] gender presentation is freaking Macbeth out,” Flynn said. “Once I started reading the text with an eye towards gender, I saw that there’s something about the witches and the way that they’re sort of women, but don’t look like women and [act] in ways that women can’t act.”
The dragged-up witches expressed their power in a way that broke through the binary of gender roles that define society both within and outside the show, and gave them an even more notable part in a show that already features them prominently. They have a strange air about them that is seductive in its power and autonomy, but still unnerving to the traditionalist characters.
“I originally had the idea for them to be strippers, very feminine people who seduce Macbeth into this power,” King said. “But I was like, ‘It needs to have more dissonance [and] a lot more of a fear to it.’”
Adding to the atmosphere of the show was the set and soundscape. Performed in the ballroom-esque Greene Room of Alpha Delta Phi—a unique performance space for theater on this campus—the entire stage was runway-style, with audience members on either side, inches away from the action.
“During the fight scenes, people are falling down right in front of you,” Flynn said. “It feels very immediate, which I think helps the connection. Even if you don’t know exactly what they’re saying, someone is right in front of you, and you can see them sweating and hear the emotion, you’re gonna connect with it.”
Elevating the experience even more was the music. Major moments through the show were underscored by fast-paced electronic music composed by Sound Designer Ezra Matheson ’27 and thundering drums played by Jane Lillard ’25.
The sound truly enveloped the audience, moving the narrative forward and accentuating moments of tension in beautiful ways. Each beat of the drum, each chord of the synth, each high-tempo mix added to the air of fear, mysticism, and masculinity that I could feel as I watched the show. It tied the show together and drove it forward in exactly the right ways.
I’m deeply sorry for anyone who didn’t have the fortunate opportunity to see “Macbeth” performed this way. I fear I haven’t stopped raving about it for the past two weeks, and I doubt I will. Flynn and King’s vision, the cast’s interpretation, the tech and music team’s flawless execution—all of it woven together produced a fantastic piece of media that I feel defined what student theater should look like.
There are a million ways to put on “Macbeth,” dear reader. This was, in my opinion, one of the best.
Sam Hilton can be reached at shilton@wesleyan.edu.
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