Tallahassee's Cascades Park Amphitheatre was near capacity for all four Southern Shakespeare performances of Macbeth.
Three weird witches set the scene for what is certainly one of Shakespeare's darker tragedies.
"Hover through the fog and filthy air," they cackled in unison at the play's outset, an appropriately macabre foretaste of what was to come.
Driven by the witches' prophecy of kingship:
"Thou shalt get kings, though thou be none," predicted one of them, the Scottish general Macbeth, played by film and TV star Marc Singer, is tempted by the lure of vast political power.
"Is this a dagger, which I see before me?" he proclaimed in perhaps the play's most famous scene.
Lady Macbeth, portrayed by Southern Shakespeare's Executive Director Laura Johnson, is an eager accomplice to King Duncan's assassination and her husband's seizure of the Scottish throne. Dripping blood from the body of the dead king, she remarked to her shaken spouse,
"My hands are of your color!"
The performances brought standing ovations from each evening's audience.
