By CAROLYN BROWN Staff Writer By the pricking of my thumbs, “Macbeth” to Franklin County comes! The cast of Montague Shakespeare Festival’s “Macbeth” rehearsing in Turners Falls last week. The production will run the weekends of March 28-30 and April 4-6 at Shea Theater in Turners Falls. P HOTO BY KENNY BUTLER Montague Shakespeare Festival’s production of “Macbeth” will run the weekends of March 28 to 30 and April 4 to 6 at Shea Theater in Turners Falls. The famous Shakespeare play, which is about a Scottish king’s lust for power and the dangerous lengths he’ll go to to claim it, gets a contemporary setting in this production, plus a thrust, putting the characters close to the audience, both literally and figuratively. In this “Macbeth,” there are “no swords, no kilts, no furs, there’s no candlelight,” said Artistic Director Nia Lynn, who also directs this production. The banquet scene becomes a party with champagne and a DJ, and Lady Macbeth receives an important letter from her husband as an email. “The point of that is not to be cool and trendy,” Lynn said, “but to make these characters relatable to people now, so we can draw the parallels to people now.” The play, she pointed out, isn’t really about 11th-century Scottish royalty; it’s about “ambition and greed and scorpions in the mind and mental health and what happens when somebody who has nothing else in their [life] but power takes control.” Director Nia Lynn, left, speaks with the cast of Montague Shakespeare Festival’s “Macbeth” at a recent rehearsal in Turners Falls. In this “Macbeth,” there are “no swords, no kilts, no furs, there’s no candlelight,” Lynn said. “The point of that is not to be cool and trendy but to make these characters relatable to people now.” PHOTO BY KENNY BUTLER Lynn and Executive Director Kenny Butler both wanted to keep more specific details about the contemporary staging under wraps, but Lynn said that the audience would feel as though “they’re in the driving seat. They’re right next door to Macbeth when he’s having his problems.” Montague Shakespeare Festival is in its second year, and this show is thematically a departure from the festival’s first production, 2024’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” Still, Butler embraces the change: “Fun and fantasy to psychological dark power drama — let’s see what we can do. Let’s do a play about the most in-love couple in Shakespeare, and then we’ll unravel that entire relationship on the stage.” “The most in-love couple” might be a surprising description given how many other famously romantic couples Shakespeare created (Romeo and Juliet, for example, or Beatrice and Benedick) but Butler said the Macbeths are unique – “a power couple the likes of which we’ve never seen in history,” in fact. (Spoilers: Lady Macbeth convinces her husband to commit the murder that puts the rest of the play, and their ascent to power, into motion.) Even with Romeo and Juliet, he said, “There’s no question it’s a deep love story, but they weren’t connected like the Macbeths.” “There’s a little bit of a Bonnie and Clyde element to their dynamic,” said Linda Tardif, who plays Lady Macbeth. “They’re not your William and Kate, so to speak, but they’re in it together, and there’s a very clear understanding that they need each other to do what they’re setting out to do.” The cast of Montague Shakespeare Festival’s 2024 production, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” rehearses at Shea Theater in Turners Falls. PHOTO BY KENNY BUTLER Parker Cross, who plays Macbeth, said that his version of the character “loves her deeply, madly, passionately, truly … It’s a rich relationship, and it’s not like she just cracks the whip and he folds. There’s a back and forth.” Lynn cast the show from a pool of almost 100 actors who took part in three rounds of Zoom auditions in February. Afterward, she said, she got “so many lovely secret emails” that said things like, “I’d be happy to travel from California if I get to play Lady Macbeth!” “The play is about ambition, and these people were openly emailing me about their ambition, which I thought was hysterical, in a very ironic way,” she said. For many of the cast and production team, the prospect of working with Lynn, a voice coach with the Royal Shakespeare Company who has worked with the West End production of “Matilda,” was certainly a major draw. “She can bring people together,” Butler said. “People love to work with her, they’re drawn to her, and she sees talented people.” “Frankly, the reason that I came here is Nia Lynn, and she has lived up to the billing,” Cross said. “She is phenomenal. She just knows theater, knows Shakespeare, and it has been a joy.” Chloe Altwell, who plays one of the Weird Sisters, said, “She has such brilliant ideas for this production, and I’m so excited to see how she brings all of these ideas to life and what it’s going to be like when we get the production on its feet – it’s just everything. She’s such a brilliant mind, and her explaining everything about this production to us was so fascinating.” Cast members in Montague Shakespeare Festival’s production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” at Shea Theater in Turners Falls last year. PHOTO BY KENNY BUTLER When the cast first started in-person rehearsals, it was only 13 days before opening night. It’s no small feat to stage a Shakespeare play, especially one with 30 actors, in that amount of time, but it’s easier when a production has an engaged, driven team, as this one does. “I wish we could sell tickets for the rehearsals,” said Cross. “That’s how awesome the rehearsals have been.” Lynn, likewise, said she’s excited about seeing the work her team has done: “They’re a keen bunch of very different people that have come together over a play – how brilliant is that?” “Macbeth” will play at Shea Theater at 7:30 p.m. on March 28 and 29, April 4 and 5, and at 2 p.m. on March 30 and April 6. Tickets are $25 (plus a fee) via montagueshakespearefestival.com. Carolyn Brown can be reached at cbrown@gazettenet.com. ...read more read less