Omar Robinson (center) with Brian Demar Jones, Dennis Trainor Jr., Claire Mitchell, and Brooke Hardman (2025). Photo by Benjamin Rose Photography.
Presented by Actors’ Shakespeare Project
by William Shakespeare
Directed by Christopher V. Edwards
Digital Playbill
Oct. 2-26, 2025
The Dorothy and Charles Mosesian Center for the Arts
321 Arsenal Street
Watertown, MA 02472
Content Warning: This production employs the use of water-based haze, stage cigarettes, flashing lights, strobe effects, and gunshots.
RUN TIME: Approx. two hours and twenty-five minutes, including one intermission.
Warning: This critique includes light production spoilers.
WATERTOWN, Mass — It’s been a busy quarter season for Macbeth performances: Commonwealth Shakespeare Company’s Stage2 student players performed Mackers in May; Cambridge’s Dream Role Players performed it in Longfellow Park last August; Boston Lyric Opera performed it at Emerson Colonial Theatre last weekend. Actors’ Shakespeare Project’s production is at the Mosesian Center for the Arts in a vastly nontraditional production through October 26.
ASP’s Artistic Director Edwards interprets Macbeth as a 1960s psychological and physical nightmare horrorscape in which fascistic tyranny, state-sanctioned drug abuse, bipartisan gaslighting and lies are de facto political tactics. In this version (as in our current White House), the psychological horrors outweigh the physical violence. Set in the U.S. immediately after the Cold War, title character Macbeth (Omar Robinson, unhinged and unbothered), Banquo (Jesse Hinson), Macduff (Brian Demar Jones), Ross (Jennie Israel), Malcolm (Chingwe Padraig Sullivan), Fleance (Vince Nguyen) and King Duncan (Dennis Trainor) are celebrating a battle win despite their personal tragendies. Amidst their revels, three psychological terrorists/witches (Jade Guerra, Amanda Esmie, Claire Mitchell) indoctrinate Lady Macbeth (Brooke Hardman) and Lord Macbeth into regicide through mind control manipulation and hallucinogenic drugs. Continue reading
