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November 21, 2013

‘How now, you secret, black, and midnight hags?’ That cheery greeting from the protagonist to the gender-bending Witches points up the most stimulating aspect of director Jack O’Brien’s botched Macbeth for Lincoln Center Theater. Expanding upon the dark magic and occult elements of William Shakespeare’s bloody tragedy, this monumentally scaled Broadway production creates bold visuals and eerie soundscapes, by turns cinematic and operatic. But the human drama is correspondingly dwarfed, thanks to a mixed bag of disharmonious acting styles led by Ethan Hawke’s underpowered take on the title role.

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Associated Press
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Jennifer
Farrar

November 21, 2013

What’s black and white and red all over— but mostly black? The answer is the elegantly noir production of William Shakespeare’s Macbeth that opened Thursday night at Lincoln Center’s Vivian Beaumont Theater, starring Ethan Hawke and Anne-Marie Duff as the murderously ambitious power-couple.

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Usa Today
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Elysa
Gardner

November 21, 2013

No one could accuse Ethan Hawke of dilettantism as a stage actor. The film star has appeared in numerous productions on and off Broadway and on regional stages, including two very good ones at Lincoln Center Theater: Tom Stoppard’s The Coast of Utopia and a revival of Henry IV, both directed by the estimable Jack O’Brien.

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November 21, 2013

Ladies and gentlemen, Macbeth is a mess. Some of the greatest dramatic poetry ever written in English coexists with the Grandest Guignol gore; astonishing insights into the human appetite for power are all but stifled by astrological mumbo-jumbo. Shakespeare was addressing two audiences, of course: the nobles and the groundlings, with their different tastes. But in partly pleasing both, has Macbeth ever pleased anyone entirely?

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November 21, 2013

It’s the Witches’ world. Macbeth just lives in it. That’s the only sensible conclusion to be drawn from Jack O’Brien’s dark and dismal new production of Macbeth, which opened on Thursday night at the Vivian Beaumont Theater, starring Malcolm Gets, John Glover and Byron Jennings as the Witches. (The production also features a lost soul named Ethan Hawke in the title role, but let’s not distract ourselves from the main event.)

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Entertainment Weekly
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Melissa Rose
Bernardo

November 21, 2013

It’s all about the witches in Lincoln Center Theater’s new revival of Macbeth. The Weird Sisters — the craggy all-male trio of Malcolm Gets, John Glover, and Byron Jennings — pull all the strings, popping up in minor roles and causing toil and trouble at every turn. Head witch Hecate (a fabulous Francesca Faridany) — styled as some brilliantly bizarre cross between Medusa and Cruella de Vil — even gets high with Macbeth (Ethan Hawke). When you’re smoking funny stuff with a bunch of ”secret black and midnight hags,” you know you’re in too deep.

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