Macbeth (An Undoing) (2024)

In Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Lady Macbeth begins the play as the driving force who ruthlessly plans and implements regicide. But she soon disappears from the action and re-emerges in the last Act, guilt-ridden, hallucinating and tormented by sleep deprivation. What happened? Zinnie Harris imagines what might be the gaps in Shakespeare’s story, undoing the play as we know it and retelling it with Lady Macbeth at its center.

As Harris recently told BBC’s Start the Week, “The shame of the Shakespeare in a way is we lose one half of the marriage; we don’t see that through. I wanted to continue that journey by putting my feet in Lady Macbeth’s shoes and walking through the tale from her perspective.”

Setting the play in 1930s Scotland during an economic depression and the pre-World War II rise of fascism, Harris incorporates Shakespeare’s original text both as written and reassigned to other characters, as well as integrating her own language. She also introduces class into the action in assertive ways, as Shakespeare’s play mostly excludes Scotland’s underclass.

When Macbeth (an undoing) had its world premiere February 2023 at the Royal Lyceum Theatre Edinburgh, The Guardian praised its “audacious conjuring of Shakespeare’s Macbeth” and the “superb” Nicole Cooper as Lady Macbeth along with her costar Adam Best in the title role. With its UK company led by Cooper and Best, the production made its London premiere at the Rose Theatre March 2024.

Zinnie Harris, Associate Artistic Director, Royal Lyceum Theatre, is a multi-award-winning British playwright, screenwriter and theatre director. Writing credits include: Macbeth (an undoing), The Scent of Roses, The Duchess (of Malfi), Rhinoceros (Royal Lyceum Theatre Edinburgh);  This Restless House (Citizens Theatre/National Theatre of Scotland); Meet Me At Dawn (Traverse Theatre); How To Hold Your Breath, Nightingale and Chase (Royal Court Theatre); The Wheel, Julie (National Theatre of Scotland); Further than the Furthest Thing (Royal National Theatre/Tron Theatre); Midwinter, Solstice (RSC); Fall (Traverse Theatre/RSC); By Many Wounds (Hampstead Theatre); A Doll’s House (Donmar Warehouse). Directing credits include: The Scent of Roses, The Duchess (of Malfi), A Number (all Royal Lyceum Theatre Edinburgh); Gut (Traverse Theatre/National Theatre of Scotland); Tracks of the Winter Bear (Traverse Theatre); The Garden (Sound Festival); Midwinter, Solstice (RSC); Gilt (7:84); Dealers Choice (Tron Theatre). Television credits include Partners in Crime, Spooks, (BBC1); Richard Is My Boyfriend, Born with Two Mothers (Channel 4). Film credits include: A Glimpse (writer and director). Zinnie has received multiple playwriting and directing awards including the 1999 Peggy Ramsay Award, John Whiting Award, Arts Foundation Fellowship award and several Fringe First Awards. Her short film A Glimpse won best short drama at SMHAF Festival. She was joint winner of the 2011 Amnesty International Freedom of Expression Award. Zinnie won the CATS award for Best Director for her production of A Number at The Royal Lyceum Theatre Edinburgh, and Best New Play for This Restless House.

Harris’ plays have been presented in the U.S. at Manhattan Theatre Club, 2002, Further Than the Furthest Thing; at Steppenwolf, 2013, The Wheel; and at A Red Orchid Theatre, 2014, Solstice.

Macbeth (an undoing) is the first production in The Shakespeare Exchange, the exchange of two productions of Shakespeare in the 2024 and 2025 seasons between Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh and Theatre for a New Audience, New York. In the winter of 2025, TFANA’s staging of The Merchant of Venice, starring John Douglas Thompson and directed by Arin Arbus, will play at the Royal Lyceum.

Design by Paul Davis Studio / Mo Hinojosa

Deloitte is the 2023-2024 Season Sponsor.

Principal support for Theatre for a New Audience’s season and programs is provided by the Bay and Paul Foundations, the Howard Gilman Foundation, the Jerome L. Greene Foundation Fund in the New York Community Trust, The SHS Foundation, The Shubert Foundation, and The Thompson Family Foundation.

Theatre for a New Audience’s season and programs are also made possible, in part, with public funds from the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities; Shakespeare in American Communities, a program of the National Endowment for the Arts in partnership with Arts Midwest; the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature; and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.