nytimes.com

Review: girls just wanna play 'mac beth'

May 20th, 2019

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Candy jewelry. Some baby dolls. A stash of tampons. In the world of adolescent girls, items like these are ordinary features of the landscape. And so they are in Erica Schmidt’s bloody “Mac Beth,” an adaptation of the Shakespeare play that with its all-female cast becomes a raucous, sometimes impish, very dark-edged revel.

 

 

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broadwayworld.com

review: erica schmidt's psychologically intriguing mac beth moves uptown

January 19th, 2020

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After playing downtown's Lucille Lortel Theater last as year as part of Red Bull's season, director Erica Schmidt's psychologically intriguing Shakespeare adaptation titled MAC BETH moves north for a remounting with Hunter Theater Project.

 

 

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broadwayworld.com

photo flash: peter dinklage and more at opening night of hunter theater project's MAC BETH

January 17th, 2020

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Hunter Theater Project's production of MAC BETH, directed and adapted by Erica Schmidt, celebrated its opening night on January 16 with a party at French American bistro, Palais.

 

 

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allarts.org

interview: in “mac beth,” director erica schmidt harnesses the ferocious power of teenage girls

January 16th, 2020

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In Erica Schmidt’s wicked adaptation of “Macbeth,” seven school girls, still donning their tartan uniforms, take to an abandoned lot to perform the Bard’s famous words. Crafted from Shakespeare’s original text, the ensuing play-within-a-play lurches forward until it comes to bloody twist that blurs the line between acting and reality.

 

 

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timeout.com

review: mac beth

May 20th, 2019

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Equally giggly and grisly, Erica Schmidt's unnerving adaptation of Macbeth for Red Bull Theater features seven young actresses performing Shakespeare's tragedy as uniform-clad schoolgirls in an abandoned lot. The language is mostly the Shakespeare’s, albeit pared down to one whirlwind act. The sensibility, however, is decidedly contemporary, as these hyperactive drama queens get lost in a gruesome fantasy world that casts some of them as villains and others as victims.

 

 

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theatermania.com

an afterschool study group brushes up on ambition and murder in mac beth

May 19th, 2019

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There's a mystical connection between the grisly paranormal and teenage girls. Just look at Bloody Mary or the Slender Man. Is there any doubt that if Abigail Williams of The Crucible were a teenage girl in 2019, she would have some dark fascination with the Momo Challenge? So writer-director Erica Schmidt is onto something when she reimagines Shakespeare's most supernatural tragedy as an afterschool group of private school girls studying Macbeth.