Lady+Lord Macbeth

The blood-soaked lust for power and inescapable downfall of the Scottish Macbeths are familiar the world over. In Tom Lanoye’s new version, Lady MacBeth comes more clearly into the foreground and an absolute but also tragic love between the MacBeths lies at the root of their calamity. Lady and Lord MacBeth are what we would today call a real power couple, but their love is overshadowed by a great tragedy: they remain childless. So the fact that their friends, Lady and Lord Banquo, can show off their baby Fléance affects the MacBeths deeply in their pain. Don’t they too deserve the best? Prompted by soothsayers, Lady MacBeth incites her husband to implement a cruel plan to get King Duncan out of the way. Her suggestion does not fall on deaf ears, jealous as MacBeth is of the recognition and popularity that seem to fall so naturally to Lord Banquo. What at first seems like madness becomes an obsession before ultimately bringing ruin.

Lanoye’s adaptation of the play, one of the icons of theatrical literature, gives a lot more space to the female characters and adds an extra layer. His addition of the unfulfilled desire to have children touches something far deeper: beneath the cruel spiral of violence and acts of desperation, Lady and Lord MacBeth wonder what meaning they can give to their lives. They are prepared to go to any lengths in that quest.