Macbeth

Bard on the Beach to September 18, 2026

Tickets from $30 at 604-739-0559 or www.bardonthebeach.org

Posted June 23, 2026

Directed by Stephen Drover, this is the finest production of Macbeth I’ve seen – and I’ve seen a lot of them. Bard on the Beach is back. Shakespeare is back.

It’s violent, it’s bloody and there’s no singing – except for a scratchy bit of Edith Piaf singing “Non, Je ne regrette rien”. That’s just one of Drover’s inspired ideas and it’s amazing how relevant it is. He also introduces a significant spoils-of-war necklace that Macbeth gives Lady Macbeth at the beginning of the play. Watch for it to come back into play at Macbeth’s demise. The three weird sisters are three very weird zombie-like figures in outrageously ragged robes and hoods designed by Alaia Hamer. And there’s a subtle but profound touch as the play ends with those weird, hooded figures hovering over the triumphant newly crowned King of Scotland. Drover creates a delicious little chill as the curtain falls. There are definitely Trumpian echoes throughout the play as Macbeth claims, “Nothing shall stop me.”

According to set designer Amir Ofek’s program notes, the play is set in “a post-urban era marred by an unspecified event that caused the Macbeths to dwell in a sealed underground bunker”. It pays to know that in advance or you might, as I did, wonder where we are. The ‘when’ is a more obviously ‘anytime’: the bunker has an intercom on the wall and there’s a stainless steel sink with real running water but the weapons are knives, swords and hatchets.  (My guest and I were in row A and feared for our very lives as the battle raged mere inches from our fearfully tucked in toes. The so-called ‘spray zone’ might have been the ‘blood zone’ had the combatants stumbled. Our seats also gave us a very close look at the layer-upon-layer of Hamer’s extraordinary costumes.)

It’s a WOW of an opening scene with warriors hacking and stabbing and bludgeoning followed by those weird sisters – called Figures in the program – delivering, in robotic tones, the prophecy: Macbeth will become the Thane of Cawdor and King but Banquo, his friend and fellow warrior, will “father” kings. Macbeth is quick to catch the inference. When he returns home and is greeted by Lady Macbeth, she immediately begins plotting the murder of the present king, a guest in their home. Not until she attacks Macbeth’s manhood does he acquiesce. And thus, the bloody tale begins to unfold.

Munish Sharma is outstanding as Macbeth and takes him – and us – on Macbeth’s brutal trajectory from indecision to bloodthirstiness, egged on by Lady Macbeth. A powerfully built actor, Sharma absolutely dominates the stage especially as his character’s urge for power gathers momentum. Sharma shows how that early waffling becomes a relentless, obsessive desire for power at any cost – including the murder of the wife and “babes” of Macduff. But who cannot be moved by Macbeth’s weary, late-in-the-play “Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow/creeps in this petty pace” ending with “It is a tale/Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,/Signifying nothing.”   Sharma nails it; we almost feel sorry for Macbeth. But so steeped in blood is he, there is no turning back.

 

Scene for scene, Tess Degenstein, as Lady Macbeth, matches Sharma’s Macbeth. She is a mess of nervous energy and her soliloquy beginning with “Glamis thou art, and Cawdor; and shall be/What thou art promis’d. Yet do I fear thy nature;/ it is too full o’ the milk of human kindness/To catch the nearest way” is powerfully, affectingly delivered. You can see the wheels turning as this Lady Macbeth sees what must be done to make Macbeth king. And she desperately wants that. No milk of human kindness in this Lady. Degenstein brings a freakishly twitchy physicality to the role that builds and builds as we see her character’s frantic cleaning of the bloodied floor.

Drover has assembled a stellar cast: Sebastian Kroon’s Banquo begins as Macbeth’s sidekick but eventually his bloodied ghost sends chills up your spine. As Macduff, Jacob Leonard sets out as a fairly insignificant character but Leonard’s final scene on the battlefield with Macbeth, as Birnam Wood comes to Dunsinane, is an absolute killer. All the rage of a man whose wife and all his “pretty chicks” have been slaughtered is set loose by Leonard. And, in a bit of gender-bending, Sara Vickruck, pulls off the strange ‘testing’ encounter the soon-to-be King has with Macduff.

“Turn, hell-hound, turn”. Now there’s a line never to be forgotten as Macduff faces Macbeth in the final moments.

Macbeth is truly one of Shakespeare’s mature masterpieces and director Drover, his cast and design crew – including sound designer Mary Jane Coomber who, with heavy percussion and other rumblings and howlings – will keep your hair standing on end.

Bard on the Beach is back – with a vengeance!