‘Macbeth in Compton Review’: Shakespeare Hits the Block, but the Language Gets in the Way

There is no rule saying Shakespeare has to stay trapped in castles, velvet curtains, and British accents. Page Kennedy’s Macbeth in Compton understands that immediately.

Set in 1990s Compton, the proof-of-concept short reimagines Macbeth as an aspiring rapper moving through a world of record labels, street power, ego, and ambition. Mac (Kennedy) receives a massive gold chain from Skid Row Records CEO Duncan (Russell Hornsby), while Lady M (Candice Renee), herself a former rapper, starts plotting how to push her man toward something bigger.

The smartest thing the film does is turn Lady Macbeth’s famous ambition speech into a rap verse. Lady M basically gives us the setup through bars, explaining that her “ambition is locked in a prison” and that maybe this could be “a new transition if she can just get Mac to listen.” Is every lyric smooth? No. Some of it lands awkwardly. But conceptually, it works. It is exposition, sure, but at least it is exposition with personality. Where Macbeth in Compton starts losing me is its insistence on keeping so much of Shakespeare’s original Early Modern English. That choice sounds good on paper, but in practice it weighs the whole thing down.

The actors are operating inside a setting that feels immediate, contemporary, and culturally specific, yet they are speaking in language that constantly reminds you that you are watching an adaptation. Instead of disappearing into the performances, and once subtitles are needed just to clarify what everyone is saying, I start wondering who exactly the movie is trying to reach.

That is frustrating because the concept itself absolutely has legs. Macbeth is not some fragile. Ambition, manipulation, power, betrayal, guilt are simple enough to transplant almost anywhere. I actually think this version could breathe a lot more if it trusted the world of Compton and hip-hop enough to fully translate Shakespeare instead of dragging the original language along behind it.

Visually, though, Kennedy cooks. The cinematography and camera movement are polished, confident, and far more dynamic than the dialogue. There is a smooth tracking shot when Mac first returns home that immediately stood out. The camera rarely feels static, and that motion gives the short an energy the language sometimes drains from it. That is also why I came away more interested in Kennedy as a director than disappointed in the experiment. He is clearly thinking about movement, space, tone, and how to make Shakespeare feel alive somewhere unexpected.

Macbeth in Compton is more than the sum of its parts, but the dialogue keeps the whole concept stuck in purgatory instead of letting it ascend.