Macbeth Muet

Live-streaming from Montreal on February 19 at 7PM PST
Tickets from $15 at www.pitheatre.com

Posted February 19, 2021

Presented by Pi Theatre as part of its 2021 Provocateurs Presentation Series (along with Frequencies, a Canadian première), Macbeth Muet is as outrageously inventive as it gets. Co-written by Jon Lachlan Stewart and Marie-Hélène Bélanger Dumas, it deconstructs Shakespeare’s play down to its bare essentials: music, body language, physical theatre, bouffon, dozens of smashed eggs and gallons of fake blood. Not for the faint of heart.

Muet is French for mute so there’s not a word of dialogue but the story, nevertheless, gets told and, strangely, it has moments that are more moving than I recall experiencing in a conventional reading of the play. Indeed, Macbeth and/or Jérémie Francoeur, who plays Macbeth, are so overwhelmed at the suicide of Lady Macbeth (Clara Prévost) that Francoeur steps out of the role, walks off the set into a studio and is only persuaded by a lace-trimmed shirt sleeve (Shakespeare’s ?) that intrudes itself into the frame, to return to finish the performance. Is it Macbeth who has lost heart or is it Francoeur? A nice little piece of meta-theatrics with the performer and the character coming together, mutually weary of the bloodshed and the blood yet to be shed.

Macbeth Muet was first seen in Vancouver as part of the upintheair rEvolver Festival back in 2018 and, of course, it was live and on stage. Co-writers and performers have scrambled to transform this stage play into a hybrid for this new age. What we are invited to see now is more than a play, more than a movie: it’s a completely new form drawing inspiration from both.

Music design by Stewart is fantastic, ranging from Grieg’s Holberg Suite and Supertramp’s Dreamer to Simon and Garfunkel’s The Sound of Silence and Mozart’s Requiem. It’s all over the wonderful place and perfect every time.

Performers Francoeur and Bélanger Dumas appear in what looks like a white chef’s uniform and a white sous chef’s uniform, respectively. In white-face, they appear and disappear behind a white paper-covered table on which various ‘characters’ appear: a white Styrofoam cup with a playing card King slotted into it is King Duncan; a Styrofoam plate with two eye holes roughly cut out is Banquo; Mrs. Banquo is also a Styrofoam plate with a bow in her ‘hair’ while their young son, is a smaller Styrofoam plate.

Unbelievably, there’s sex between a hockey mitt and an oven mitt, each time producing an egg. Remember, Macduff’s line upon discovering his slaughtered children and wife? “What, all my pretty chickens and their dam?” Talk about taking a line and running with it!

Somehow, despite all the eggs and blood, Macbeth Muet delivers an astonishingly moving take on the play: the Macbeth’s are childless and it drives them to unspeakable acts of brutality. Sure, they’re only eggs but, believe it or not, you will begin to see the eggs as the children Mr. and Mrs. Macbeth never managed to produce.

There are gains and losses between the original staging and this new version: seeing the faces of Bélanger Dumas and Francoeur up close is great. Their faces and hands are so expressive and seeing them looming large carries a big punch. But some of the ‘ghostly’ camera work wore thin for me – mostly because I was most engaged by Bélanger Dumas and Francoeur and eager to see how the final battle scene would be presented. And it’s a blood-dripping thriller with Dixie cups.

You will never see a Macbeth this imaginative again. Guaranteed. The New York Times review said, “It may break your heart in ways you don’t see coming.” Strangely true.