Macbeth hath indeed lost his head. Annnnnd, scene. /fin

MacDuff brought a knife to a gunfight too, buuuuuut my spider sense is telling me he's gonna do a bit better than Siward did.

Aw shit, Siward brought a knife to a gunfight. Yeah, he was *definitely* born of woman.

Dudes in ghillie suits are a great modern reworking of the march of Dunsinane Wood. One of the things I love about reworkings of plays or poetry or folk tales is that the reworking can reveal a continuity of history and humanity: we know that in Shakespeare's time, men might think to camouflage themselves in greenery just as they do today, with ghillie suits. It's exactly the same thing, just 500 years later.

Aw shit, and here comes the Birnam Wood... shit's 'bout to get real for Mad King Macbeth.

It dawns on me that Macbeth is very much in the tradition of the Mad King archetype. Shakespeare subverted him from a simply melancholy but benevolent character to someone equally as tragic, but deeply dark, disturbing and disturbed.

In the beginning we first see Macbeth dressed in soldier's fatigues; he's back to the same again, come full circle.

Ok, so Lady MacB. has totally lost her shit; just saw the "out, damn spot!" scene. Brilliant. Vibrant. Wretched. Now in the chaos of King Macbeth at the table in his great hall, full of the detritus of a failed feast. It's really odd to see the huge painting of Stewart depicted in the fashion of an Eastern Bloc propaganda poster.

LOL I am someday going to use Lady Macbeth's line: "You have displaced the mirth."

Annnnd, we're singing & dancing as the Macbeths lose their shit. We just tipped over into La La Land, folks.

Oh wow. Macbeth just snatched a cigarette from the mouth of one of his lords and crumbled it upon his head, a move that reminds one of Adolph Hitler's dislike of cigarette smoking. I have no doubt the visual reference is entirely intentional.

Also, Sir Pat Stew looks utterly luscious in a dinner jacket, and Madam Fleetwood is absolutely *stunning* in her crimson evening gown.

I see the seeds of her insanity in the wobble of her head on her neck - very slight at this point, first seen after she set up Duncan's chamberlains. The stress is wearing on her. I don't think these are people who really had the mettle, the spirit, to be ruthless killers. Violent, yes. Brutal, yes. But they could not compass the ends of their enemies without conscience, and the guilt is driving them absolutely mad.

Whoa. Lady M. got slutty. Red dress, tarted up, in a red bedroom. And the sad detail of a single child's shoe in a drawer, shut quickly to shut out the pain of seeing it, and of... loss, I presume.

There's a great deal in this play about how bound up with masculinity violence is. First Lady Macbeth, later King Macbeth, berate men for basically not being man enough to muster the initiative to do violence to other men. I'm at the scene where King Macbeth is instructing the two assassins to do in Banquo and the MacDuff family. Yowza.

I must confess, at certain moments, when Stewart plays Macbeth with firm confidence instead of shivering cowardice, I half expect him to say something like "Make it so!"

Dunno why I'm on a Shakespeare kick of late, but I am. As I watch or read I'm reminded of how many adages & idioms we use today that the Bard gave us, & how his works have woven into literature & theater & movies & the like. "Macbeth" gives us, for instance, "a dagger of the mind" from the famed dagger speech - used as a title for an episode of Star Trek (TOS).

The imagery of death in his production is everywhere. The kitchen scene, hooo boy - in the preparation of a meal there is death & violence implied everywhere.

OK & Lady Macbeth could cut glass with her cheekbones. Yowza. Incredible. She & Mr. Macbeth are much more partners in this production - not so much Lady Macbeth driving her husband on, but the two of them similarly-minded in purpose much earlier in the play.

The first step was Hubris, which was the *thought* that you might alter your fate somehow. It's not an action - Ate (pron. "AH-tay") is the action you take to change it. And Nemesis is the retribution you receive for daring to try it. In the case of the Macbeths, their hubris is the *thought* that they can climb to royalty via murder. The action is... well, the murders and whatnot. Their Nemesis is when it all goes to shit in the final act.