Review by Frank Plowright

Are you someone who demands any adaptation of a Shakespeare play be a reverential word for word experience? Avoid Macbeth: A Tale of Horror. If you’re of the opinion that a plot can be adapted to other formats and doesn’t have to rigidly follow the original source, read on.

Stefano Ascari retells Macbeth as a horror fantasy, certainly a viable interpretation considering the elements within the play. In doing so and primarily using language that doesn’t require online consultation, the strengths of a contemplation of power, temptation and ultimately corruption are more readily revealed. Shakespeare’s original text is most likely to apply to the witches, although plenty of additional dialogue is required for their beefed-up role moving events more towards horror. Their presence is increased and broadened via the introduction of their problems and squabbles, and this has both memorable and disappointing moments. There is mention of Aleppo in the original text, but it’s too indulgent to expand that idea to the witches dabbling in 2004. More successful is introducing the idea of old superstitions revived.

The startling art of Simone D’Armini contributes greatly. The cast are brought to vivid life, implanted in detailed scenery revealing more than the surroundings. The warriors are brutes with impossibly massive swords, Macduff with long scars, but others have the very modern touch of bearing small plasters on nicks and cuts, while Lady Macbeth is a suitably wild-eyed presence. Much time is spent with the witches, and they’re dark, unknowable creatures whose prediction scenes are gloriously rendered. D’Armini restricts the colours, but uses them with great precision, red common and green a surprise. Unrestricted is the violence and the gore, much of it suggested in the play, but here brought to blood-curdling excess.

No translator is credited, so perhaps Italian writer Ascari’s English is fluent. That’s a view shaped by the back of the book material revealing this wasn’t first published abroad. It’s ambitious, then to opt for Scottish dialect for some characters. This leads to the occasional error (“mare” instead of “mair” on the sample art), but the effort is appreciated for what is after all superstitiously known as “The Scottish Play”. Unfortunately, though, it’s inconsistent, applied to Banquo throughout, with Macbeth drifting in and out of dialect.

This is powerful and revealing, a harsh and grim story appealingly retold.