PRESS RELEASE: Announcing War of the Worlds
22nd May 2025
As with all of imitating the dog’s theatre shows, this production of Macbeth is a heavily inter-textual project – meaning it draws on many cultural influences across a range of media, including theatre, film, TV, art, and graphic novels.
There have of course been a number of cinematic adaptations of Macbeth over the years, some of which have informed imitating the dog’s interpretation. These include (in no particular order):
- Roman Polanski’s 1971 adaptation: A gloomier, bloodier and more sexually charged Macbeth than had previously been seen on the big screen. A fairly faithful rendition, apart from a slightly altered ending, this version has informed ITD’s production in its casting of relatively young actors in the lead roles. Polanski said Macbeth is “an ambitious, successful warrior — and warriors didn’t live to be old men.”
- Joel Coen’s 2021 adaptation: By contrast, in casting much older actors (Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand) Coen gives the Macbeths a care-worn and world-weary sense of entitlement which ITD’s interpretation is more of a reaction against. But this version contains visual references to Welles & Kurosawa that have also influenced ITD’s production.
- Orson Welles’ 1948 adaptation: Orson Welles directed, starred and wrote the screenplay for this relatively straightforward interpretation. A tight budget forced Welles to utilise recycled sets and costumes for the movie, giving the production a strange, other-worldly atmosphere. Making a virtue of a necessity, he employed some creative cinematography – using tight framing and unusual camera angles.
- Justin Kurzel’s 2015 adaptation: Kurzel’s hyper-realistic battlefield setting foregrounded much of the action that normally takes place off-stage in a theatre. But the opening sequence of the film, depicting the Macbeths cremating their infant child has had an influence on ITD’s interpretation in referencing the question of the couple’s status as parents, whether past or future.
- Akira Kurosawa’s 1957 Throne of Blood: As with Kurosawa’s later re-telling of King Lear, Ran (1985), his version of Macbeth transposes the action to Edo-era feudal Japan and is heavily influenced by elements from traditional Noh theatre. Kurosawa’s retelling of the story is the furthest from the original on this list, and has influenced ITD’s production not just in its theatricality and cinematography, but in some of its altered plot points – for example the implied threat that Duncan (Tsuzuki) poses to Macbeth (Washizu), causing the audience to feel more sympathetic to a man acting partly out of self-preservation, and the introduction of a pregnancy into the already chaotic events of the story.
Of course, Kurosawa was not the first director to reimagine the story of Macbeth in a different setting or milieu to the Scottish monarchical dynasties that inspired Shakespeare’s original – nor the last. imitating the dog’s adaptation of the play sets the action in an imagined futuristic criminal underworld, influenced more by gangster and sci-fi movies and TV shows than by more faithful reproductions.
There is some precedent to this type of interpretation – many directors have drawn parallels between the strict hierarchies of traditional monarchical structures and those of organised crime. The subversion inherent in drawing parallels between the power-play and scheming present in both royal and criminal households has proven irresistible time and time again. Examples include: Ken Hughes’ 1955 film Joe Macbeth which set the action within a 1930s Italian-American mafia family; William C Reilly’s 1990 Men of Respect, a contemporary US mob-based version starring John Turturro as ‘Mike Battaglia’; Penny Woolcock’s 1997 Macbeth on the Estate, which as the name suggests transports the story into the world of a small-time drug dealing operation on a London council estate; and Vishal Bhardwaj’s 2004 Maqbool, ‘the Bollywood Macbeth’, which transplants the tale to the underworld of Mumbai.
Beyond actual adaptations of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, there are a number of other film and TV references that have informed the visual and narrative design of ITD’s retelling. These include the early Japanese noir films of Akira Kurosawa (Drunken Angel (1948), Stray Dog (1949), The Bad Sleep Well (1960), High and Low (1963)) with their low-key lighting, existential dread and morally dubious characters; the neo- or neon-noir films of Hong Kong directors like Wong Kar-Wai (eg Fallen Angels (1995)) with their woozy, brightly coloured urban landscapes and blend of gritty crime drama and whimsical comedy; and the brutal violence and dark humour of Takeshi Kitano’s yakuza movies, particularly Outrage (2010).
As well as East and South-East Asian crime and gangster influences, the ganglands imagined in ITD’s Macbeth are equally informed by classic American mob masterpieces such as Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather Trilogy (1972 – 1990) and Brian De Palma’s Scarface (1983). Another key reference was the more recent Italian TV adaption (2014-2021) of Roberto Saviano’s book Gomorrah, a work of investigative journalism exploring the Neapolitan Camorra crime dynasty. The show, with its Jacobean plots involving warring families and the Machiavellian manipulation of ever-shifting loyalties, was an important influence on the style and story of this production.
And then of course there are the you-and-me-against-the-world tales of damaged lovers violently taking on the systems that oppress them, such as Arthur Penn’s Bonnie & Clyde (1967), Terence Malick’s Badlands (1973), and especially Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers (1994) which was not just a narrative influence but also a huge visual one.
Much of the world-building in ITD’s Macbeth was also visually informed by futuristic, slightly dystopian metropolises depicted in classics like Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982) as well as more recent sci-fi TV shows like The Expanse (2015 – 2022). And let’s not forget the influence of Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill Vols. 1 & 2 (2003-4) – not just the first film’s use of a Japanese anime animation style to tell a segment of the story, but also in the narrative influence of a wronged woman hell-bent on revenge. Macbeth 2 anyone?!
Ben Mellor
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