Set in a near-future dystopia, Bard’s 2026 version seeks to make Shakespeare’s tale of ambition, murder and moral collapse resonate with contemporary audiences
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Bard on the Beach: Macbeth
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When: June 11-Sept. 18
Where: BMO Mainstage, Vanier Park, Vancouver
Tickets: Starting at $30 at bardonthebeach.org
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Is Macbeth a hero or a villain?
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“That’s the question,” says Stephen Drover, director of Bard on the Beach’s upcoming production of Shakespeare’s 400-year-old tragedy.
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Set in a near-future dystopia, Bard’s 2026 version seeks to make Shakespeare’s tale of ambition, murder and moral collapse resonate with contemporary audiences.
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“At the beginning, Macbeth is presented as a sympathetic hero,” says Drover. “He’s offered an opportunity to advance his life and wrestles with whether he should take it. Most people can relate to moments when they’ve asked themselves, ‘Should I do this? Is it right? Is it wrong?’”
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But somewhere along the way, Macbeth transforms.
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“It stops being a quest story,” says Drover. “Suddenly, it becomes a dragon-slaying story.”
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For Drover, one challenge is making some of the play’s most familiar elements — witches, prophecies and regicide — feel immediate rather than distant. But set that tale in a dystopian near future and there is more leeway for suspension of disbelief.
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“What does scare us are the futures that seem to be rushing toward us: Climate anxiety, social breakdown, moral decay, the feeling that the world is becoming increasingly unstable,” he says. “If we imagine a future where things really have gone badly wrong, audiences can accept that premise fairly easily.”
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In Drover’s vision, the world of Macbeth is post-technological but not necessarily superstitious.
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“There’s something unnerving about not being able to identify what’s happening,” says Drover. “Hearing a noise in the night, and not knowing what it is, is often scarier than hearing something you already believe exists.”
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The dystopian setting also changes how audiences think about Duncan, the king whose murder sets the tragedy in motion.
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In Shakespeare’s time, killing a king represented a cosmic disruption. In Bard’s version, Duncan’s importance lies elsewhere.
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“The parallel we’re exploring is a world where things have gone badly wrong, but there is one person who offers hope,” says Drover. “One person who might have a solution. One person who might know how to make things better.”
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Rather than a divinely appointed monarch, Duncan becomes humanity’s best chance at recovery. His murder doesn’t simply remove a king; it destroys the possibility of a better future.
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Taking on the title role is Munish Sharma, who calls playing Macbeth a once-prophesied milestone.
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When Sharma was in university, a director wrote him a note predicting that one day he might play the Scottish king. More than 20 years later, the prediction has come true.
