Closing out NoExit Performance’s 2012/13 season is a unique 90 minute drama. Adapted and directed by Michael Burke, the show is a retelling of Macbeth, but instead of Scottish kings and a fight for the crown, our main characters are all patients in a mental hospital. Using the existing eeriness of an old school that’s been transformed into an office complex, the production takes advantage of its location. As the audience makes its way into an old classroom and settles into the seats the patients are already stumbling around muttering to themselves. From that moment you know the title of the play, This Is Not Shakespeare’s Macbeth, is definitely true. As the story unfolds we hear well-known lines like “Out damn spot” and “something wicked this way comes” being spoken from the mouths of nurses and mad men. Macbeth (Matthew Goodrich) is a semi-catatonic patient rambling nonsense when we first meet him. As he becomes the troubled murderer audiences have been fascinated with
Midwest theater reviews, everything from Broadway musicals to Shakespeare.