The actors are to be commended for their energy and pluck, with many actors taking on multiple roles. What's more, since all the props in this production are taken out of the students' book bags, Schmidt subtly raises the heavy issue of school violence. Even though Fuhrman could have performed the speech as a pure hallucination within Macbeth's mind, the sudden appearance of a gleaming steel instrument in Fuhrman's hand introduces true terror.

What is particularly good about Schmidt's production is the way Shakespeare's language and emblematic imagery remains intact: thus Isabelle Fuhrman downstage for Macbeth's famous is-this-a-dagger-that-I-see-before-me speech has Witch 1 (standby Izabel Mar went on for AnnaSophia Robb at the preview performance I attended) spin a real dagger across the dirt to Macbeth midway through the soliloquy. Then there's John Logan's 2012 film Private Romeo, a retooled Romeo and Juliet for the all-male cadets at a military school and Joe Calarco's 1998 take on Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet called R and J, with all the roles played by four men. Her artistic forerunners include Phyllida Lloyd and her all-female productions of Julius Caesar, Henry IV, and The Tempest at St. With the wild abandon of youth they toss down their scripts and on the sheer wings of their adolescent imaginations, morph into the play's dramatis personae. These girls meet up to do the Scottish Play in a vacant lot outside the city on an autumn afternoon. The premise: Seven girls at a private school have a 'Macbeth' club. Now in its New York premiere, under the auspices of the Red Bull Theatre, it is brash, irreverent, smart, and awash with new millennial flavor. But Erica Schmidt, who has adapted and directs Shakespeare's bloodiest play in a new all-female version entitled Mac Beth, gives it a go at the Lucille Lortel Theatre. It's difficult to say anything new or illuminating about Macbeth.

(left to right) Isabelle Fuhrman as Macbeth Ismenia Mendes as Lady Macbeth

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