“What’s done cannot be undone,” says Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth. Scottish playwright Zinnie Harris thinks otherwise, offering Macbeth (An Undoing), which unravels and remakes the classic text with Lady Macbeth at its centre.

It’s an unsurprising choice for Harris, who is best known for feminist reinterpretations of Western canon such as Ibsen’s A Doll’s House and Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi. She would not be the first to wonder how it is that Lady Macbeth takes charge early in Shakespeare’s play, even as her man falters, only to fade away into madness then die offstage.

By mixing Shakespeare’s text – sometimes uttered by different characters than expected – with Harris’s own, Macbeth (An Undoing) puts the lady even more in charge while her husband descends into psychosis.

Furthermore, the fleeting character of Lady Macduff is transformed into one of greater significance: Lady Macbeth’s sister-like cousin, who is having an affair with Banquo. The three “weird sisters” are also more prominent, and less weird.

Instead of pursuing this interesting feminist trajectory, Harris ultimately presents patriarchal control as inevitable. The sisterhood is upended again and again, and increasing meta-theatricality sees the Lady Macbeth character/actor stymied – by other characters, by Shakespeare’s play, even ostensibly by the...