Out, damned spot! Saoirse Ronan will make her debut on the UK stage as Lady Macbeth in a new, feminist re-telling of Macbeth.
The Oscar-nominated actress will tread the boards for the first time at London’s Almeida Theatre alongside her Mary Queen of Scots co-star James McArdle as Macbeth, The Guardian reports.
This adaption of Shakespeare’s Scottish Play comes from Yäel Farber, who has been described as an “earthy, political, blood-and-mud kind of director,” by the Almeida’s artistic director Rupert Goold, and that Farber’s interpretation of the text will make full use of the theatre’s intimate space with only 100-250 people allowed indoors due to social distancing constraints.
We don’t have to recount the plot of Macbeth for you (who are we, your GCSE English teacher?`) but it’s fair to say that Lady Macbeth is among one of the most prestigious roles in all of theatre. A complicated prism of a woman and one of Shakespeare’s most accomplished creations, from whom numerous interpretations and performances can be drawn.
Basically, get ready to start stanning, thespians, and someone inform the Oliviers, Saoirse is coming to slay and not to play.
The Tragedy of Macbeth will open September 25 and run until November. It was previously in the works before the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, before being understandably put on hold.
The production also handily shares its name with Joel Cohen’s recently-announced adaption, starring very recent Oscar winner Frances McDormand as Lady Macbeth, alongside Denzel Washington as Macbeth, which is set to debut on Apple TV+ later this year. Shakespeare, what can we say, it’s all the rage nowadays.
This may be Saoirse’s first time on the UK stage, but she previously starred in a Broadway version of Arthur Miller’s classic communist parable The Crucible in 2016. She was last seen on our screens alongside Kate Winslet in Francis Lee’s queer historical drama Ammonite.
She’s next set to reunite with Little Women co-star Timothée Chalamet and an all-star cast for Wes Anderson’s long-awaited The French Dispatch, which is set to finally see a cinematic release this summer, following its indefinite postponement in October 2020.