Macduff tore out Macbeth’s eye in the visceral final battle of the show. Photo courtesy of Zach Rosing. 

JACK WILLIAMS | CULTURE CO-EDITOR | jrwilliams@butler.edu

Shakespeare. For some students, his name may evoke images of esoteric verses suspended in dusty textbooks like fossils in amber. For others, it conjures up the beauty of timeless sonnets. Regardless, the Butler Theatre program brought the historical tragedy of Macbeth to gut-wrenching life during showings in the Lily Hall Studio Theatre from Feb. 26 to March 2, 2025.

The play follows Macbeth — played by Sutter Sherwood — and his wife, Lady Macbeth — played by Ellie Hooven — as they kill King Duncan and seize the throne of Scotland, spurred on by unbridled ambition and the prophecy of three witches. Ghosts, guilt and bloody death haunt the pair as they force the audience to reflect on just how far a person could go to fulfill their wildest dreams. 

Butler Theatre’s last production of “Macbeth” was in 1960, though in 2009, alumni Molly Gray explored Lady Macbeth within a 1950s suburbia setting in her senior project “Lady M”. This year’s show changed the time period to Gilded Age America, which was defined by several decades of industrialization during the late 1800s that lasted until the early 1900s.

Even more notable than the setting was director and theatre professor Andrés López’s decision to emphasize the layered nature of the leading couple.

“Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are incredibly complex characters, [though] it’s easy to look at Macbeth as some big wimp who is being led around by his overbearing wife,” López said. “[That’s] an overly simplistic interpretation. So the trick is, how can we make this relationship dynamic, where they are equal partners in what they want to do … so it becomes two people in a toxic, co-dependent relationship?”

Sherwood and Hooven portrayed this dynamic by wearing a tissue-thin veil of pleasantry when sharing the stage with the murdered King Duncan’s loyalists which quickly fell to reveal their naked desire for power. Lady Macbeth’s tortured gaze during her nightly wanderings forced the audience to confront her even when she could not see them. Likewise, Macbeth’s predatory instincts, combined with his shouts of terror at seeing the ghosts of the dead, inexorably drew the audience into each scene. 

By the climactic final fight between Macbeth and his challenger Macduff — played by Austin Bock — in the service of the late Duncan’s son Malcolm — played by Avery Terry — Macbeth has surrounded himself with an army of yes-men and believes he is invincible to anyone born of a woman. The dynamic felt like it could have occurred in a corporate boardroom as readily as in a medieval castle.

Sophomore acting major Sutter Sherwood, who played Macbeth, felt that setting Butler’s production in the 1920s highlighted relevant parallels to today’s world.

“It’s about this corrupt imbalance of power, imbalance of wealth, all of the inequalities and killing your way to the top,” Sherwood said. “It is a cutthroat world. That goes along with the Gilded Age feeling our show is playing on because [in a time of] booming businesses, you are either at the top or the bottom. I think that is also a good mirror into today’s world.”

The dog-eat-dog nature of Macbeth’s Scotland was complemented by the unsettling performances of the three weird sisters, or witches, played by Hannah Luciani, Ally Danbom and Marissa Huggett. Their white dresses, eerie laughter and flowing movements set them apart from the alternately brusque and regal performances of the respective nobles and soldiers.

Ellie Hooven, an acting and strategic communication double major who played Lady Macbeth, enjoyed the audience’s visceral reactions to Lady Macbeth’s famous sleepwalking scene.

“I get to look at the audience at that point, and it’s [fun] to shock them,” Hooven said. “There was a girl last night where I looked at the audience, and she looked behind me. I [thought], ‘I’m not going to grab you; I promise you’re safe.’ I feel like I play the whole show in [those] five lines.”

The animalistic nature of the lead couple’s unraveling was heightened by the fight scenes, which included the assassinations conducted by Macbeth’s hired murderers and the climactic final battle. Using a thrust stage meant there were audience members on three sides of the actors rather than one. The dynamic action needed to be intelligible from every angle.

López — certified in all eight of the Society of American Fight Directors’ weapon disciplines — drew from his extensive fight choreography experience to craft scenes he hoped would connect audience members to the greater emotional arc of the play.

“People ask, ‘Why do you do theater?’” López said. “Very simply, I just say theatre should provoke, and whatever it provokes [is] up to the person experiencing the production … The violence in this play is one way to do that, especially when Macduff and Macbeth [fight]. Macduff rips out the eyeball of Macbeth [and] squeezes it. [The audience’s] mouths are on the floor; they’re grabbing each other and looking around.”

No matter how well choreographed, though, an intimate knowledge of Shakespeare’s language is necessary for the actors’ lines to hit home. Dramaturg Morgan Mead helped actors unpack the meaning behind their dialogue by providing historical context to the play. 

Hooven gained insight into the gravity of Duncan’s death by learning how Shakespeare’s contemporaries would have read the religious imagery of the play.

“[Lady Macbeth] is calling upon these spirits and asking for evil to fill her veins … People at the time would [think that] you have nothing left if you don’t have God,” Hooven said. “If you choose Satan, you have to die. They also believed killing the king [was] like killing God. And killing God is awful, but you’re becoming God.”

The play — one of Shakespeare’s shortest — moved at a pace that left the audience without much time to reflect between scenes. It is only at the end — once the catharsis of Macbeth’s death is achieved — that they have time. The audience may never face choices with consequences for all of Scotland, but the corrupting influence of power is a problem each generation confronts in their textbooks and before their own eyes. 

Butler Theatre’s next mainstage production of the 2024-2025 season will be “About Love: From the Pen of Anton Chekhov” April 16-19 in the Lilly Hall Studio Theatre.

A prior version of this article incorrectly stated that the Gilded Age occurred in the 1920s as well as misidentifying King Duncan’s son as Macduff. The Gilded Age was defined by several decades of industrialization during the late 1800s that lasted until the early 1900s and the correct character name is Malcolm.