Last night, The Repertory Theatre of St. Louis produced the most well-known, but also “cursed”, performance that William Shakespeare has ever written known as “Macbeth”.

The show started off in a unique way, instead of having someone come out on stage and welcome everyone, all of the characters in the play came out, kneeling as if they were before royalty, exclaiming their name with bold voices and precise annunciation. The scene only lasted a few minutes and then it was right on to the show.

For anyone who hasn’t heard of “Macbeth”, it is a play about a man who is a leader in the Scottish army who is driven to be king, no matter how much blood has to be shed to get him there. During the play, actors came out on scene from various places due to the unique way the set had been built. It was not an extravagant scene, with wood pieces laying around it, what seemed to be broken ceiling tiles above the set to give patterns on the floor of the stage to sometimes even enhance the emotion that characters were supposedly feeling.

The highlights about the play was that it was very fluid with actors coming onto stage and exiting. It had strong passion that seemed to be driven from the actors to give the play an almost realistic feeling to it. The costumes seemed to be custom tailored, by looking like leather armor that was worn back in the time period during war, and nobility as well.

There were also a few things that didn’t seem as they were promised to the audience. For example it was said that this would be a very bloody play, with what looked like the use of animal blood or a fake red-syrup, but there was only relatively one scene that contained blood, so unless they were being specific about that one scene, the play was not that bloody. The other thing that seemed to be an issue was that when it came down to a fight scene, the actors didn’t even seem to be close to making contact with the others, making the “fighting” seem to look like “tickling from a distance”, and it seemed as if some other the actors were not as into character as others due to the lack of enthusiasm and emotion.

In all the play was a nice way to enjoy the evening, with some comedy that was thrown in by one of the actors, which helped relieve some tension during the performance. The play was done well, but could have been a little bit better, and if I were to rate the play it would get a 3 out of 5 stars.