'Macbeth' Opens on Broadway

Rupert Goold's "Macbeth," starring Patrick Stewart, which began at England's Chichester Festival Theatre before moving to the West End and then to the Brooklyn Academy of Music, opened on Broadway at the Lyceum Theatre last night. Below is an excerpt of Eric Grode's review of the BAM production.

"The milk of human kindness, always a rare commodity in Shakespeare's spare but unsparing 'Macbeth,' is nowhere to be found in Rupert Goold's scorched-earth production. Set amid the depravity of Stalinist Russia and firmly anchored by a wrathful Patrick Stewart, Mr. Goold's daring and diabolical mounting turns all of Scotland into a virtual abattoir, peopled with little more than a pile of corpses that an ever-dwindling coterie of survivors must climb over on the way to a gore-slicked crown."

The full text of Mr. Grode's review can be found at www.nysun.com.

"Macbeth" runs until May 24 (149 W. 45th St., between Sixth and Seventh avenues, 212-239-6200).