Director Dusty Brown, who makes their Chicago directing debut with Three Crows Theatre’s storefront staging of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, has trimmed the tragedy down to a fast-paced, intermissionless 105 minutes of blood-drenched storytelling. (“Macbeth has sword/dagger violence, onstage murder, and discussions of murder. Recommended for children 12+ due to all the murder happening onstage,” reads a content advisory on Three Crows’s website.) This intimate, economical production boasts spooky visual design by Kellian Keeler (set) and Piper Kirchhofer (lights), who together transform the intimate Redtwist Theatre space into a dungeon-like hellhole well suited to this classic tale of dark supernatural deeds. There’s even an onstage cistern filled with water, from which a macabre apparition or two may arise—or in which a guilt-maddened murderer or two may try, in vain, to wash the blood from their hands.
MacbethThrough 10/30: Thu-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PM; also Mon 10/24 7:30 PM, Redtwist Theatre, 1044 W. Bryn Mawr, threecrowstheatre.com, pay what you can
But Brown’s editing of the text lessens the moral impact of a drama grounded in Christian notions of free will. Having been promised by three prophetic witches that he will become king, Macbeth, a heroic military leader in 11th-century Scotland, caves in to his wife’s manipulative tactics and resorts to murder (including murder for hire), thereby sullying both his manhood and his immortal soul. By trimming seemingly repetitive arguments between the spouses—and rushing the final action as Macbeth approaches his duel to the death with arch-enemy Macduff—Brown turns Macbeth into a tale signifying, if not nothing, then at least less than it should.