Macbeth on the Estate

Award-winning documentary maker Penny Woolcock has adapted and directed a contemporary version of Shakespeare´s “Macbeth” using a Birngham housing estate as a location, and incorporating local residents in smaller roles and as Crowd. Shakespeare´s words are used, but there are no tights or booming voices. It is still a story of power, love and violence, but told in an immediate and modern way. In the film, “Duncan” is the godfather on a tough estate, in a fictional world where centralized power has disintegrated. The loyal “Macbeth” defeats the rebels with iron bars and baseball bats. But events spin out of control when three ragamuffins predict he is to become leader himself. His wife urges him to kill “Duncan”, unleashing a terrible chain of violence and betrayal. “Macbeth on the Estate” follows the success of Penny Woolcock´s BBC 2 documentary “Shakespeare on the Estate”, in which residents of the same Birmingham Council estate reenacted scenes from Shakespeare.