Eimuntas Nekrošius and Luk Perceval stage Macbeth in black

ENMacbeth, for all its theatre lore as a play unlucky for performance, has always posed a challenge to directors and actors, uncertain as to how to thread its interlaced dimensions - historical, political, moral, existential, cosmic, and domestic. Peter Brook calls such multidimensional texture the “density of the moment” of “a play of Shakespeare’s”, and this type of density in Macbeth involves the quite enigmatic relations between Macbeth and Lady Macbeth.1 This significant female role - the only one of any substance in Shakespeare’s “Scottish” play - etches a contradictorily powerful yet curiously absent figure, motivated not only by the chimeras of kingship and the absolute control the latter affords but also, and equally importantly, by love. From their insight into this aspect of the play arises the similarity between the perspectives that Eimuntas Nekrošius and Luk Perceval unfold in their, respectively, 1999 and 2014 productions.