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Dear Reader,
Living in Macbethian Times
Writing a very interesting piece in The Guardian, Mark Lawson wonders why there are five productions of MACBETH running in the UK at present
"MACBETH is such a deep and ambiguous work that the repetition never became fatiguing and raised many questions about why and how to perform the 1606 tragedy, he writes. "Four Conservative prime ministers in eight years – with some in the party seemingly agitating for five in nine – inevitably makes topical a play about a failing state and threatened leaders. But, where this year’s earlier MACBETHS were clearly inflected by national politics, the latest show more international influence, from the wars in Ukraine and Gaza."
He notes that one of the productions has a set portraying a wasteland with bombed buildings and burning trucks. UK's bumbling leaders are in for some lampooning too. "In the course of Macbeth, Scotland has three kings -- Duncan, Macbeth and Malcolm. And a vital directorial decision is the relative merits of these leaders," he comments.
The times we live in, fiction merges with fact, and who understood it better than Shakespeare.
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