Saoirse bases Macbeth on Kardashians
IT MAY be known as ‘The Scottish Play’, but a new re-working of Shakespeare’s Macbeth has found a surprising new reality celebrity inspiration from across the Atlantic.
For four-time Oscar nominee Saoirse Ronan has revealed she looked to the reality star Kim Kardashian for inspiration for her latest role in the epic tragedy.
The Irish actress is making her UK stage debut as Lady Macbeth in the tragedy at the Almeida Theatre, North London, opposite the Scottish actor James McArdle as Macbeth.
“We keep thinking about Macbeth and Lady Macbeth as like a Kim and Kanye situation,” Ronan told BBC News, “where there have been stages to their success and real kind of highs and lows.”
The pair decided to compare Macbeth and Lady Macbeth “to a modern power couple that is professional but also has tenderness and there is so much of their private life that we don’t know,” Ronan says, referring to Kardashian and her rapper husband Kanye West, who announced they were divorcing earlier this year.
Tragedy
Ronan and McArdle have also decided to call their characters Susan and Nei l Macbeth. “It helps,” says Ronan, “because this is a domestic tragedy about a couple.
“The tragedy is that these two people who are soul mates and peers and very much partners in every way... when that starts to come apart, what we would hope is that, when people come to see it, that is when the sadness seeps in.”
McArdle agrees, saying: “The play has been hijacked by the horror concept, the Halloweeny concept.”
In director Yael Farber’s production, entitled The Tragedy of Macbeth, it is the relationship between the Macbeths that takes centre stage.
“The thing that we wanted more than anything was a functional marriage. A love story,” explains McArdle.
The play runs from October 1-November 20.