Is this a punk ass pig which I see before me?
Fort Worth's radical remix of Shakespeare.
I don’t need you to like Shakespeare. But I do need even the haters to admit that modern adaptations can be bangers. (I will forever defend Baz Luhrmann’s frenzied kaleidoscopic fever-dream version of Romeo and Juliet, with its incongruous juxtaposition of original Shakespearean dialogue and Los Angeles-inflected setting.)
That’s why I was delighted to discover, while stumbling around an archive, that a Fort Worth theater once produced its own reimagining of Shakespeare’s Macbeth.
Brother Mac, a creation of writer and director Rudy Eastman and co-adapter Michelle Baker, debuted at Fort Worth’s Jubilee Theatre in February 1993. It then returned to the stage for a revival a decade later, though it never seems to have traveled beyond Fort Worth.
Here’s a synopsis, based on my reading of a revised 2001 script (now housed among the Jubilee Theatre’s old papers in the Fort Worth History Center): Brother Mac reimagines the story of Macbeth, an aspiring Scottish thane undone by his own bloody ambitions, as a vicious power struggle within a militant Black Power organization and uses the tragedy to explore the way an individual’s thirst for personal political power can destroy a collective movement based on solidarity. (A 2015 Star-Telegram feature on the Jubilee Theatre described it not-quite accurately as “Macbeth set in the Black Panther Party.” While clearly inspired by the Panthers, the fictional group actually calls itself the People’s Liberation Party.)
It’s such a promising premise! I really wanted to certify this adaptation as a banger based solely on this ambitious idea. But that would mean sidestepping a crucial question: Is the play actually good?
The answer is… complicated.
When Brother Mac first hit the stage in 1993, reviews were mixed. (Or rather: the only review I managed to find was mixed.) The Star-Telegram’s theater critic observed that the production was “imperfect in execution but inspired in concept,” though he ultimately concluded that “inspiration outweights [sic] imperfection.” The 2003 revival was more warmly received — by the same reviewer, no less, who called it “freshly sharpened” and opined that the adaptation had “lost none of its sting.”
Though I don’t have the benefit of a full staging, I have, as I mentioned above, read the script, which is both fascinating and weird. One thing that struck me immediately is that the adaptation isn’t exactly subtle. Passages like this exchange between the witches are typical:
2nd WITCH. Which one is Brother Mac?
1st WITCH. There standing near Chairman Duncan.
3rd WITCH. He looks neither ambitious nor disloyal.
1st WITCH. The thread of revolution is true but the fiber that spins it is flawed.
2nd WITCH. Is theirs’ a just cause?
1st WITCH. As just as turning the other cheek and getting slapped again, As just as a Georgia bigot slinging an ax handle, As just as a Jim Crow, apartheid, poll tax, and church bombings, As just as no freedom in a free state, As just as any cause.
This can come across as heavy handed — an example of the play wearing its messaging on its sleeve. Yet the sheer political bluntness is appealing in its own way. (Macbeth, after all, is a play fundamentally about politics.) Plus, the witch’s line about “the thread of revolution” being compromised by the “fiber” — that is, the people involved — is a genuinely interesting idea. Any political movement is going to have its Macbeths, those members whose contradictory desires don’t always align with what’s best for the movement as a whole.
And this isn’t a one-off line. It signals what is probably Brother Mac’s best developed theme.
There’s a powerful creative decision in the scene where Brother Mac kills Duncan that really exemplifies this. (In this adaptation, Duncan is party chairman, rather than king of Scotland.) The actual murder happens off-stage, as it does in the original play. But unlike Shakespeare’s version, Brother Mac places the witches on-stage while the deed is done, and they recite an abbreviated version of "The Black Child's Pledge," a speech originally published in a 1968 Black Panther newsletter. It begins with the words, “I pledge allegiance to my Black people” and ends:
I will train myself never to hurt or allow others to harm my Black brothers and sisters for I recognize that we need every Black man, woman, and child to be physically, mentally and psychologically strong. These principles I pledge to practice daily and to teach them to others in order to unite my people.
Again, not subtle, yet brutally effective in driving home the point: Brother Mac’s own desire for power is leading him to betray the principles that presumably led him to join the People’s Liberation Party in the first place and, by doing so, he undermines the party’s promise to improve the lives of all black people. Brother Mac is selling out his brothers and sisters for his own personal gain.
So that’s the fascinating part of the script. The weird part is what Brother Mac does to Shakespeare’s language, which might be charitably called half-hearted remixing. It’s like the play can’t decide whether to stick with the original Shakespearean dialogue or modernize it. So it tries to do both. And trying to do both means it doesn’t really do either.
To be fair, the opening scene, in which the People’s Liberation Party throws down with the cops, does feature a line that’s wholly new and also my favorite of any modern Shakespeare adaptation:
LENNOX. Our valiant brothers, fighting their just cause, had no sooner forced the punk ass pigs out of the park when the SWAT team arrived
Most of the time, though, the play’s language just kind of muddles along, sometimes borrowing phrases directly from the original while also making small changes. There’s one particularly bad half-rewrite that’s impossible for me to forgive and that’s the absolute butchering of Macbeth’s “Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow” speech.
Here’s the original:
SEYTON: The Queen, my lord, is dead.
MACBETH. She should have died hereafter;
There would have been a time for such a word.
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
And here is Brother Mac’s version:
1st WITCH. Your wife, Mr. Chairman, is dead. She has killed herself.
BROTHER MAC. She would certainly have died sometime—one day that message would have come. Tomorrow—and tomorrow—and tomorrow—All our yesterdays have merely lighted the way for fools to reach their graves. Out, out brief candle. Life is but a walking shadow. An Actor who poses and rages for a short time on stage and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
It’s not that I think Shakespeare’s original language is sacred and can’t be touched; I’m not that precious. It’s fine to cut up the text for artistic reasons. But it’d be one thing if the adaptation took the underlying ideas in Macbeth’s soliloquy and transformed them into something new, clothing them in fresh language that fit the 1960s setting. This just reads like mediocre paraphrase — and it’s paraphrase that doesn’t even bother to rewrite all the words! I really feel that if you’re adapting Shakespeare you need to either (a) mostly stick with his language or (b) commit to crafting original lines that reflect the context of your story because getting stuck halfway between the two, as Brother Mac often does, just devalues the other work you’ve put into crafting a new and interesting piece of art.
Anyway here is Lost in Panther City’s official editorial position:
Flaws aside, Brother Mac is still cool and deserves another revival — and maybe another revision.
P.S. Here’s a copy of the script: