Beloved Topanga couple Coco Blignaut and Edison Park have co-written and produced a play—a new twist on Shakespeare’s Macbeth—for the Hollywood Fringe festival. Blignaut and Park’s The Real Lady Macbeth was created to “…remove the curse on Lady Macbeth, on witches…” with the intention of revealing the true innocence of the female characters in the play.
For those less familiar, William Shakespeare’s Macbeth presents Lady Macbeth as the true mastermind behind much of her husband’s violence in the play. Lady M is made out to be a manipulator—bloodthirsty, mad, and deeply guilty. The Real Lady Macbeth tells a less familiar tale, one that seeks to redeem Lady M, as well as the three witches. Although the story deviates greatly from Shakespeare’s version, some lines of his are interwoven throughout the show, given a new context.
Writer, actor, and witch Coco Blignaut describes feeling haunted by Lady Macbeth when working to memorize one of her monologues from Shakespeare’s play, back in 2014. Blignaut struggled with the monologue, and for some reason, Lady M was constantly on her mind. She decided to research Shakespeare’s well-known character, only to find that Lady Macbeth was based on a real historical figure named Gruoch. Through small bits and pieces of archaeological evidence, theories, and historical manuscripts, Blignaut pieced together the truth of Lady Macbeth; that she has been misunderstood for centuries.
As I walked into the small black box theatre, I felt instantly transported. Though the set was minimal, the stage was adorned and imbued with the magic of nature, a theme explored throughout the play. The cast of four embodied each character with authenticity and commitment to the truth of Lady M’s story. The real Lady Macbeth, or Gruoch (played by Coco Blignaut), is depicted as one of the three witches, having grown up in pagan Scotland, where a belief in the mysticism of nature was widespread. The play tells the tale of Gruoch’s life, how she met Macbeth (played by Edison Park, Blignaut’s real-life husband), their love, their tragedy, and their truth. As an audience member, the play felt intimate, and cathartic perhaps for the spirit of Gruoch, and perhaps for the actors as well. The heart and soul of the play was its emotion, its raw, animalistic connection to nature, and the power of the feminine.
The world premiere of The Real Lady Macbeth was on June 12 at The Actors Company, for the Hollywood Fringe Festival. The show will run until June 28.
