It’s an audacious experiment that Boynton pulls off with remarkable charm, thanks to a talented cast and an appealing story to go along with the revamped Macbeth. Tina Benko stars as Sydney, an actress who’s had some Hollywood success but claims, “I don’t want to do another stupid movie.” Instead, she signs on to play Lady Macbeth at a Shakespeare festival in fictional Collinstown, Mass. The middle-aged Sydney is immediately drawn to the play’s handsome younger director, Adam (Peter Mark Kendall), and Benko and Kendall have strong chemistry from the start.
When Sydney arrives in Collins-town, though, she finds herself enamored with another man (Will Brill), a seemingly spectral presence she encounters in the woods behind her bed-and-breakfast. He speaks entirely in iambic pentameter, with an old-fashioned British accent. He’s adamant that he’s William Shakespeare. At first, he’s happy just to chat, expressing pride and a bit of skepticism that his writing has endured for so long, even surpassing that of his contemporaries Christopher Marlowe and Ben Jonson. But when Sydney brings up the supposed curse that has plagued productions of Macbeth for centuries, Will (as she calls him) reveals his true motivation.
It turns out that Will has something in common with Star Wars creator George Lucas, in that he’s never been satisfied with one of his most famous works. Macbeth is cursed because its author is sick of hearing it in what he believes is an inferior form, and he wants a rewrite. Sydney is left trying to convince Adam and her fellow actors that the updated version of Macbeth that she brings them has come directly from the original author. Brill brings some goofy exuberance to his portrayal of Shakespeare, but the comedy here is gentle, and the movie remains character-driven even though one of its main characters is a long-dead historical figure.
Will’s ambitious project serves as a reflection on the nature of creativity, when someone as brilliant as Shakespeare can still doubt himself and nitpick one of his greatest creations. The corporeal characters are also struggling to find artistic fulfillment. Even without Shakespeare’s ghost, The Scottish Play would be a pleasant, low-key dramedy about life in the theater, reminiscent of cult-favorite Canadian TV series Slings & Arrows. The supporting cast of The Scottish Play includes a younger actress vying for Adam’s attention, an exasperated stage manager and a flamboyant star whose main concern with Will’s rewrite is that it features more lines for him as Macbeth. The romance, when it arrives, is sweet and satisfying. Boynton never overplays the interpersonal drama.
Shakespeare scholars might disagree, but to a layman, the dialogue that Boynton writes for Will sounds convincingly Shakespearean, and his additions to Macbeth fit seamlessly within the original play—even if they’re not necessarily an improvement. There’s a long tradition of remixing Shakespeare’s work, from Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead to the Oscar-winning Shakespeare in Love to Steve Coogan’s comedy Hamlet 2. The Scottish Play lands somewhere in the middle of those. It’s a worthy addition to the Shakespeare meta-canon.
Bell is a Las Vegas-based writer and critic.
Illustration by Giovanni Alberti