Most jobs require costume designers to hit the ground running, but Kym Barrett’s work often needs a backflip, some somersaults, and a few spinning kicks before the race even starts. Barrett mints icons like Apple cranks out iPhones. She hit the scene with the shockingly modern Shakespeare adaptation, Romeo + Juliet, and has not stopped sprinting since. In The Matrix series, she reimagined the superhero as an antihero with the unforgettable sweep of a black, floor-length coat and impenetrable mirrored sunglasses…
After hundreds of years of adoration and interpretation, tackling Shakespeare is daunting for any production. However, the tragedy of the Thane of Cawdor turned King of Scotland is the directorial equivalent of walking into fire. Notoriously bad luck, the story is a mystical political thriller, murder plot, and historical drama. More time separated Shakespeare from the historical Macbeth than separates us from Shakespeare. The play was performed on a 44’ by 27’ stage. To capture that spatial limitation the film is shot on sets with minimalist architecture that cuts shapes and angles across a spare background so the characters seem to wander through an Escher drawing.