so yesterday I went to see the greatest Macbeth adaptation that has ever existed (in my humble opinion)
the lead in this show is Mackenzie, a 13 year old child star from 2006 (the era accurate vibes? immaculate) who plays a goofy background character in a tv show for tweens
she is delivered a prophecy of stardom by a hair/makeup artist (who is wearing a leopard print everything) nicknamed Pickle because she's 'covered in wrinkles and sleeps in brine'(???)
she tells her overbearing Living Vicariously Through Her mother (wearing a complete pink Juicy Couture tracksuit) about the prophecy and when the first piece of it comes to pass (Mackenzie is moved up into the role of Main Character's Best Friend) this woman decides they must force the rest of the prophecy to come to pass so she can achieve peak stardom
by swapping out Dahlia's (the star of the show) makeup remover with ACID
THEY MELT HER FACE OFF
(they had a fog machine attached to her gown so the fog would come up out of the sleeves as she was rubbing her face to imply it was being burned off, I don't think that's how acid works but it looked sick as fuck)
a 'traumatised' Mackenzie rides the sympathy of the masses (boosted by the studio who use the whole drama as a launching pad) and gets her own tv show that is basically Hannah Montana meets Totally Spies
(also this production takes a WHOLE LOTTA potshots at the creepy predatory nature of the child star industry and at times it was VERY effectively and deliberately uncomfortable)
we skip forward 5 years and Mackenzie is a huge star with her extremely successful tv show and a music career but she's also just turned 18 which means she must now enter her 'sexy era' and is already burning out from the overexertion and is existentially spiralling because she's been so conditioned by the industry to see aging as a career death sentence if she doesn't perfectly make the jump from wholesome child star to attractive-but-not-embarrassingly-slutty adult celebrity (her whole rant over how child stars have to be Just The Right Kind Of Sexy as soon as they hit 18 was so horrifically real it felt like a slap in the face), also the way the director of her music video gets so casually handsy with her was skin crawlingly awful
(her new breakout sexy song contained an above average number of references to feet licking, which could mean nothing or could be a reference to a certain kids show director but I digress)
the songs in this show do actually slap tho and one of them is on youtube!
also her guilt has made her a chronic insomniac who subsists entirely off of Starbucks and bullying her personal assistant (who wears exclusively bird themed shirts, not important I just think it's neat)
extra fun detail, Mackenzie carries teacup pigs around in her purse (they oink when jostled which is frequently used with extremely effective comedic timing) until she later reveals during a massive breakdown that teacup pigs are a myth and she just keeps having to swap her piglets out for new ones when they grow up into a big ugly pigs which quickly spirals into a metaphor about how she sees herself (this show is SO FUCKING GOOD AAAA)
meanwhile after she goes no contact with her mother with an absolutely SCATHING (and very much deserved) verbal smackdown about how pathetic she is for piggybacking off her daughter's success because she herself was a talentless hack who failed to make it as an actress, the mother attempts to start her own business... by making bleach based hand creams
this comes with a phenomenal breakdown on live tv as she is desperately dodging questions about Mackenzie to talk about her cream and spirals into a monologue where she Freudian Slips about the bleach in the cream accidentally calling it 'acid' and rants and cries about how it will strip your skin clean off and give them a fresh start
fuck I LOVE this adaptation dude holy shit
meanwhile the butch lesbian caterer Gail (her explicitly remarked upon hemp apron is covered in carabiners btw) who has been nothing but super sweet and accommodating to Mackenzie for the whole show (even going out of her way to make several attempts at baking a sugar free cake so Mackenzie could celebrate her promotion without breaking her diet) is implicated in a new prophecy after Mackenzie tracks down Pickle for more info on her future
after a very quick scene that super effectively shows how happy and in love with their jobs her (explicitly stated lesbian single-mother) catering team are (making the next moment so much more heartbreaking), Mackenzie has them sabotaged so they lose their jobs (by bribing her personal assistant with more bird themed shirts to plant literal human shit in their kitchen)
so Gail turns on Mackenzie, revealing that she had witnessed her and her mother near Dahlia's trailer during the makeup remover/acid bottle swap and now that she knows what Mackenzie is capable of she's put together that they were the real culprits behind the attack
Mackenzie goes whole hog with her 'nobody will believe you because no one born of a woman can take me down' thing and Gail (with much confusion because who fucking talks like that in the year of 2011) reveals that her birthing parent was non-binary, and she has been filming this confrontation this whole time and has Mackenzie's entire admission on camera (all this takes place backstage at the Teen Choice Awards btw)
also, a very important detail, this production was EXCEPTIONALLY Australian, turns of phrase, cultural references, no disguising of accents, it was even performed in a theatre right next to the iconic Sydney Harbour Bridge, and by god did they lean into it without overplaying it
11/10 god I hope I get to see another Shakespeare production as creative and hilarious and fucked up as this one
