Macbeth Muet

Macbeth Muet is more than a play based on Shakespeare’s Macbeth. It is a surprising, daring and deeply moving theatrical experience. In this performance, two actors, Jérémie Francoeur and Marie-Hélène Bélanger Dumas, play every role without speaking a single word, telling in under an hour, through gesture and objects, the story of a ruler and his wife caught in a spiral of crime.

The production is as bold and extravagant as the creators behind the Canadian company La Fille Du Laitier, Caroline Belanger, Jon Lachlan Stewart and Marie-Hélène Bélanger Dumas, who in 2015 began performing theatre in a delivery truck with original, striking shows where objects and absurdity intertwine. They triumphed with Caisse 606 (about two cashiers dreaming of escaping supermarket monotony) and Macbeth Muet. Their aim was to surprise audiences, to demystify the performing arts and to approach theatre with playfulness and originality. And that is exactly what they achieve in Macbeth Muet, inspired by silent films, grand puppet theatre and melodrama. We follow Macbeth, who encounters three witches on the battlefield, predicting his rise to the throne. Drawn by this prophecy, Macbeth and his wife descend into a spiral of ambition, betrayal and bloodshed.

The play completely deconstructs the original text, condenses entire scenes into a single glance, and presents a world stripped of morality and excess. Around a table covered with white paper, Francoeur and Bélanger Dumas handle objects like magicians, using them to tell the story: candlesticks transform into a forest, a hockey glove becomes an enemy, and an egg a child. Though Macbeth Muet has no spoken words, it is far from silent. A soundtrack infuses rhythm, emotion and tension into the tragedy. Songs like “Just the Two of Us” by Bill Withers and Grover Washington Jr. transpose the bond between Banquo and his son, while “The Sound of Silence” by Simon and Garfunkel drifts through Lady Macbeth’s sleepless nights. “Dreamer” by Supertramp and classical pieces like Grieg’s Holberg Suite and Mozart’s Requiem add further depth to this striking retelling.