Holy Trinity's Macbeth production transforms Shakespeare with steampunk brutality
A high school staging of the tragedy reimagines the play across a desolate industrial wasteland, with standout performances and choreographed combat that rivals professional productions.
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Holy Trinity Catholic High School's production of Macbeth, directed by Stavros Sakiadis, transposes Shakespeare's bloodiest tragedy across a desolate steampunk wasteland. The reimagining is arresting: where the original text speaks of ambition and guilt, this version layers industrial decay and mechanical dread.
Dominic Gonsalves incarnates Macbeth's tyrannical hubris with eloquently recited soliloquies and convincing merciless greed. His steady mastery of iambic pentameter is stirring and compelling. Nicole Casimir Derival, playing Lady Macbeth, embraces the ruthlessness of the illegitimate monarch with striking intensity and polished phrasing. From taunting jeers to guilt-ridden madness, Casimir Derival sets the character's volatile downfall ablaze with conviction.
The three witches—Sophie Mora, Layla Costescu, and Posimi Sotunde—emerge looming and uncanny, with a diabolical metaphysicality. They chant in a haunting trochaic tetrameter (a difficult, unnatural rhythm), commanding it with controlled mania. Their necromantic mysticism and paradoxical prophecy feel masterfully manifested.
Gonsalves choreographed the battles with hypnotic brutality and calculated body language. Toby O'Connell, embodying Macbeth's foretold foe Macduff, conveys raging grief through frightfully realistic combat, confronting Gonsalves' Macbeth in an intricate, violent dance of sword and shield that is as immersive as it is intense.
Toby O'Connell also designed the set—a dramatically brutalist space adorned with metallic pipes fashioned from pool noodles, an automated door, and a pair of austere thrones complete with electric plasma balls. Wall rivets, corroded rust, and industrial detail envelop the space. It's a high school production that matches the ambition of professional theatre.