MacBeth: A Tale Told by an Idiot returns in all its weird and wonderful glory
09 May 2025 - Photos by Adrianna Prosser

What are these,
So withered and so wild in their attire,
That look not like the inhabitants o' the earth,
And yet are on't?

Before reading any further, please click this link and read my review of the first production of MacBeth: A Tale Told by an Idiot. Everything I wrote still holds true and there is no point in repeating myself. There is always trepidation when revisiting a piece of art that was incredibly impactful on first viewing. Always a fear that the reality will not live up to the memory. But reality has no domain with Eldritch Theatre, this remount of MacBeth: A Tale Told by an Idiot transcends the raves rattling around in my hard drive. So instead of attempting a coherent and concise review, which I have hopefully already done here, I'm going to offer some further impressions and thoughts graced me by a second time around. 

Not that the productions are identical. Something beyond a fresh coat of paint has been applied to the designs by Melanie McNeill (Phantasmagoria 3D!, The Cold War) and creator and performer Eric Woolfe (The Strange and Eerie Memoirs of Billy Wuthergloom, Phantasmagoria 3D!, MacBeth A Tale Told By an Idiot, The House at Poe Corner, Dr Weathergloom's Here There Be Monsters, As You Like It), or else the lights by Gareth Crew have been altered, black light filters?, to add an eerie eye-popping fluorescence. The glowing green of the witches' skin is more ghoulish, "so wild," and the copious blood spilling, MacBeth is exceedingly violent, is a vivid rich arterial red. There are many meticulous details that while possible to miss consciously, add to the uncanny ambience. From the large cauldron that serves as a podium, stage, and prop storage worthy of a clown car, to the tiny jewelled drops of blood that sparkle on MacBeth's boots, painstaking care has been taken to create a hodge podge aesthetic that strives for casual homemade horror but achieves couture. As does Woolfe's respect for, and gleeful dissection, of Shakespeare's text.

Look like an innocent flower,
But be the serpent that hides beneath it

Macbeth is a much performed play and most of us recognize quotes and a general outline. However Macbeth also contains much of Shakespeare's dreaded exposition, written in the Elizabethan prose that Woolfe, as a borscht belt comedian version of the comic relief Porter, admits hasn't aged well. Woolfe translates huge swathes of exposition into sleight of hand magic tricks. Which is itself a magic trick, the hand being faster than the ears. Woolfe mostly subsumes his natural showmanship and the sleight of hand becomes oddly organic, the supernatural as narration. As subtly metaphorical as Shakespeare's musing on the power of fate as predicted by the slyly deceptive but accurate witches. The effect is, as it is with the puppet costars, initially distancing and comical, until the cards or hoops take on a life of their own. The massacre of Macduff's family begins as a card trick, becomes hilarious, and then suddenly turns dark and terrifyingly real as we realize the marks on a card are lives being snuffed. We have whiplashed from gentle awe to uproarious laughter to bleak sorrow in a matter of seconds. Slapstick and tragedy can co-exist. Magic. 

She'll put a spell on you

Of all the puppets, Lady MacBeth with her immobile Mar-a-Lago plastic features (yes, there is a very current thematic thread throughout MacBeth: A Tale Told by an Idiot for those who want to speculate), is the most fascinating. MacBeth kisses her passionately and we feel the heat of their bond. She floats, she slithers (in an entrance that mimics that of the witches), she goads MacBeth forward into his damnation. In a riveting scene, Lady MacBeth lures the king's guards away from their post and to their doom. To the pop rock sounds of Redbone, Lady MacBeth gyrates and beguiles. It is hilarious and bizarre dirty puppet drag. And oddly titillating (Woolfe has a great set of gams) before escalating into a heightened unreality where a stone-faced puppet seems to wink with great allure and two literal blockheads are dispatched by their love of drink dispensed, another masterful magic trick, by a ruthless seductress. It is chilling and comical simultaneously. And as despicable a villain as Lady MacBeth may be in this production, her death scene and the fate of her corpse moves us again into that unsettling suspended space where laughter and horror are simultaneous. 

Tis the eye of childhood, that fears a painted devil

While this MacBeth delves deeply into the themes of powerlust, guilt, and prognostication, it is full of wit and playful morbid innocence. The "double double toil and trouble" witches have a special effect that brings anachronistic life to the famous passage. The score (uncredited but integral) is classic horror film cliché as arranged by Carl Stalling, with Woolfe himself, in whatever character he is inhabiting, shouting "Boogity Boogity Boo" to trigger a scene change. No need to announce, "Exit, chased by a bear." Banquo's hideous demise, achieved by a ridiculous sleight of hand over-reach that we believe unreservedly, is outrageously farcical and nauseatingly horrific. Woolfe revels in dancing on the line between the macabre, the ghastly, and the deliciously comic. That would be enough for an evening's entertainment but Woolfe has more talent to burn. Leaning against a wall, a spotlight catching his pellucid eyes and the blood painted on his shaved pate, MacBeth soliloquizes with no assistance or gimmicks, just the bard's words delivered exquisitely, clearly and resonantly. The text matters to Woolfe. But as a puppet remarks, this is so much weirder. Magic.