The Real Lady Macbeth: Lifting the Curse, Casting a Spell.

I walked into the intimate performance space at the Actors Company in Hollywood expecting an inventive reimagining of Shakespeare’s Scottish tragedy. Instead, I found myself transported to the mist-soaked Highlands, surrounded by heather, holly, and the old magic of a world where the veil between nature and spirit feels deliciously thin.

The Real Lady Macbeth, written by Coco Blignaut and Edison Park and directed by Sofia Streisand as part of the Hollywood Fringe Festival, is not a retelling of Macbeth. It sets the record straight on Macbeth’s wife, the queen.

Glyde and Lady MacBeth, played by Eve Sigall and Coco Blignaut

The writing possesses a lyrical, bardic quality, capturing the cadence of medieval

Scotland. Shakespeare’s familiar echoes drift through the play like ghosts: “Out, damned spot,” and the witches’ incantations, “Double, double, toil and trouble,” but these famous lines are woven into something entirely new.

Visually, I could not take my eyes from the stage for a single moment. Scenic design and other aspects of the production were brilliant.

According to the program notes, Mademoiselle Coco became fascinated by the historical woman behind Shakespeare's notorious Lady Macbeth. Research led her beyond the playwright’s invention to the real wife of King Macbeth—a woman whose reputation has been unjustly blackened for more than five centuries. What emerged from that investigation is a theatrical act of restoration, an attempt to give voice to a woman history and literature left buried beneath accusation and superstition.

Edison Park as Macbeth

Blignaut’s Lady Macbeth is no shrill schemer clawing for power. She is wild, intelligent, sensual, deeply connected to the natural world, and achingly human. She exists within a landscape shaped by Celtic traditions, Pagan belief, and a living relationship with nature. This Scotland still belongs to the druids. Fairies and magic are aspects of reality.

As Lady Macbeth, Coco Blignaut is radiant and powerful with the gravity of myth. Across from her, Edison Park’s Macbeth is magnetic and unexpectedly tender. Their relationship may be the greatest surprise of the evening. Rarely have I seen Macbeth and his wife portrayed with such warmth, delight, and affection toward one another. Their marriage feels lived-in and real. The tenderness between them makes the coming tragedies all the more devastating.

Fire burn and cauldron bubble

Tragedy comes, not through vaulting ambition, but through love, loss, mercy, and cruel irony.

No spoilers here, I’ll say no more about the consequences of compassion.

Equally remarkable is the play’s treatment of the so-called “weird sisters.”

Rather than caricatured witches hunched over a bubbling cauldron, Blignaut and Park present fully realized women bound together by friendship, grief, wisdom, and the mysteries of the natural world. Lady Macbeth, her maid Ilyss, and the crone Glyde form a feminine trinity that possesses a revolutionary warmth and authenticity.

Their woodland dance sequence is pure, feral enchantment. The ritual center is not a stagey Halloween cauldron but a rustic clay basin exuding an earthy, ancient, and magical quality.

Ilyss by Savannah Shackett

The production never flinches from female experience. Childbirth is portrayed with a frankness almost never seen on stage. Indeed, this may be the first theatrical production I have attended in which a placenta becomes part of the dramatic reality, neither sensationalized nor grotesque.  

The costumes deserve special mention. Rough and sumptuous at once, luxurious while simple.

Perhaps that is the true purpose of The Real Lady Macbeth: not simply to revisit an old story, but to lift a curse.

Creators, Coco Blignaut and Edison Park

For centuries, Lady Macbeth has been reduced to a symbol of ambition and madness. The witches, too, have been cast as little more than weird agents of darkness. This play gives them back their complexity, their humanity, and their voices. Along the way Macbeth himself emerges as more than a warrior or a tyrant, but as a man capable of tenderness, and unexpected mercy.

For one captivating hour, the story we thought we knew becomes something richer and more surprising. My hope is that The Real Lady Macbeth may be enjoyed by a wide audience for generations to come.

The Real Lady Macbeth

Written by Coco Blignaut and Edison Park

Directed by Sofia Streisand

Featuring: Coco Blignaut, Edison Park, Savannah Shackett, and Eve Sigall

Produced by Rosarium Films and Let Live Theater

Part of the Hollywood Fringe Festival, running June 4–28 throughout Hollywood.

One of the festival’s most remarkable features is that 100% of ticket sales go directly to participating artists. If you're looking to support independent theater while experiencing daring new work, skip the streaming services for an evening and venture into the Fringe. You may discover something magical.