[In the following review, Rosenberg maintains that Yukio Ninagawa's production of Macbeth was a gripping and intelligently crafted interpretation of Shakespeare's play.]

Scottish play, my eye! The Macbeth that the Ninagawa Company presented at the Brooklyn Academy of Music was a fierce, exciting, harsh, and impassioned samurai drama set in a hall of mirrors that reflected not only the actors, but also the audience. As directed by Yukio Ninagawa, Shakespeare's tragedy became the story of a young couple who find themselves steeped way over their heads in blood.

This is the ultimate power duo, thrust into a chaotic world before experience can teach them how to handle their lives. As with any great work of art, the play opens up new meanings every time it's performed. Here the implication was that Macbeth is a callow, irresponsible youth whose physicality far outstrips his intellect.

The production also stressed that this is a work about fathers and sons. Bent on murdering Banquo and his son, Fleance, before they can produce heirs, or slaughtering Macduff's wife and kids, this Macbeth was a petulant, vengeful, rash adolescent. (“He has no children!” shouted Macduff upon learning of the king's crime.)

Performed in Japanese with occasionally prosaic English supertitles, the production also more than hinted about Vietnam and imperialism, of whatever nationality. The Macbeth of Toshiaki Karasawa and the Lady Macbeth of Shinobu Otake were attractive, jejune figures entangled in political situations beyond their control. But he grew in stature and emotional maturity the further into hell he went, and she morphed into a pitiful, lost woman-child. Indeed, his last speeches were spoken with repressed fear and dignity, not false bravado.

The swift production (even at three hours) was filled with striking stage pictures and spoken with the kind of guttural sounds we're used to from Japanese warrior films. Like Throne of Blood, Kurosawa's film version of Macbeth, this was a roaring, action-packed, but not shallow reading of the play.