Women take up arms in gender-bending Macbeth
Only title role and Banquo played by men in Shakespeare festival production
Warrior women loom large in a new production of Macbeth staged by the Greater Victoria Shakespeare Festival.
Shakespeare’s 17th-century drama — about a ruthless general who becomes King of Scotland — breaks from tradition by featuring a mostly female cast, said Karen Lee Pickett, who codirects the play with Kate Rubin. Only the roles of Macbeth and Banquo will be played by men.
Pickett, the festival’s producing artistic director, said the choice reflects a global trend toward “intentional casting,” in which a less literal approach to casting is encouraged.
“We need to crack it open a little bit. Shakespeare’s been a bastion of the white male for a few hundreds years and that’s starting to change. And that’s really exciting,” she said. “Kate and I felt that [in Macbeth] we wanted to cast some of these warrior roles as women. It’s interesting. And it gives women a chance to play roles that they normally don’t get to play.”
This version of Macbeth features another twist. The characters will be portrayed as Picts, who lived in Scotland in the late Iron Age and early medieval period. “The Picts were pretty much the aboriginal people of Scotland. They were one of the first peoples there,” Pickett said.
“It seemed a good fit, the idea that it’s a very earth-centred society that’s grotty and violent … They’re known to have possibly had a matrilineal society. And that the women may have been warriors.”
Macbeth will portray a “bloody and violent” era replete with swordfights and hand-tohand battles. Pickett said theatregoers bringing young children should be mindful of this, adding: “It’s not Disney.”
The festival will also mount Love’s Labour’s Lost.(Macbeth runs Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, while Love’s Labour’s Lost runs Wednesday and Friday. Performances are at 7:30 p.m.)
Love’s Labour’s Lost is directed by Janet Munsil, who also directed last season’s popular Twelfth Night, featuring a gender-swapped cast.
As well as running at Camosun College’s Lansdowne campus, Macbeth will be staged Aug. 3 to 5 at Saxe Point Park in Esquimalt, a first for the festival. The Saxe Point run was made possible through a provincial grant issued through Esquimalt Township Community Art Council.
Pickett said overseeing a second outdoor site does pose challenges. “We’ve had tons of meetings,” she said.