Patrick Stewart’s Macbeth Takes on America

23/10/2007

The production of Macbeth starring Patrick Stewart is to transfer to New York in the new year. The news comes soon after Stewart won this year’s prize for Best Performance in a Play at the TMA Awards, the only nationwide awards for theatre, for his title role in Macbeth – commonly referred to as “The Scottish Play”.

Director Rupert Goold’s award-winning production will finish its ten-week West End season at the Gielgud Theatre on 1 December 2007, so the cast and crew can have a break over the Christmas and New Year’s Eve periods. The production will then transfer to the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) on 12 February 2008 for six weeks.

The production was hailed as the “Macbeth of a lifetime” by critics when it opened at the Gielgud Theatre on 26 September 2007. It marks the third Bard turn in the West End this year for Patrick Stewart. He was also at the Novello Theatre from January through to March in the Royal Shakespeare Company transfers of Antony and Cleopatra and The Tempest. Stewart will no doubt savour his short break at Christmas and New Year’s Eve, before he starts work again in New York early next year.

Goold’s production of Macbeth sets the story in a “timeless and nameless” East European, Stalinist state. The production is designed by Anthony Ward, with movement by Georgina Lamb, music and sound by Adam Cork, and lighting by Howard Harrison.