While stages are closed nationwide, we will have to settle for filmed past performances from mostly British and Canadian companies such as the National Theatre, Shakespeare’s Globe, and the Stratford Festival. The latter two are streaming previous incarnations of wildly different Macbeths. The Stratford Festival’s unedited version is competent and more conventional, but less viscerally exciting. Visual excitement is caused whenever Ian Lake as Macbeth frequently removes his shirt to expose a brawny torso, but it doesn’t make up for a lack of dramatic tension. There are some scary moments in Antoni Cimolino’s production such as the lightning-flash transition from Banquo’s murder to the banquet scene, but the performances are mostly one-note and there are few genuinely affecting emotions conveyed.
