As Macbeth’s whole world falls apart, the audience sits in rapt silence. Here, in Stratford, the Shakespearean classic is being put on with a modern twist: This Macbeth is in leather, not tartan. His castle is a dingy Quebec motel. His kingdom, an empire of outlaw bikers — complete with Harleys, chains and guns.
As an audience of seniors in leisurewear gaze upon the stage, I glance over at the expert next to me, someone I asked to join me this night.
He’s a former Hells Angel. He’s been in prison for drug trafficking and unlawful confinement. His father was once the most powerful outlaw biker in Canada. In this audience, there’s no better person to judge the authenticity of director Robert Lepage’s vision to set Macbeth amidst the bloody Quebec biker wars of the 1990s.
And he’s beside me, taking notes like a theatre critic.
Harley Davidson Guindon, 39, sits quietly and soaks it all in. He’s wearing a casual — but classy — white shirt bearing his name from Harley G’s, his clothing boutique on South Simcoe St. in Oshawa. A few seniors who look like long-retired school teachers chat around him, but Guindon doesn’t make a peep, instead typing earnest observations into his cellphone.
“The dramatic opening with a character being dropped into the water with anchors set a strong tone,” he notes, writing that the scene has the feel of “Sons of Anarchy,” the gritty television series starring Stratford alumnus Kim Coates.
Moving Macbeth into modern times, with a backdrop of warring bikers, might seem like an unwieldy leap in time and setting, but Guindon says Lepage pulled it off.
He would know a thing or two about the outlaw life. Guindon claims a 41-0 fight record in prison. His dad Bernie Guindon was once the undisputed leader of Satan’s Choice, Canada’s largest biker gang, before the Hells Angels moved in; I came to know Harley while writing a book on his father.
“The play transitioned smoothly from a Shakespearean setting with lords and horses to a modern biker theme, showcasing a clever adaptation,” the outlaw-turned-critic notes on his phone.
Why stage Macbeth with motorcycle gangs? That’s the question at the heart of this play, running until Nov. 2 at the Avon Theatre. Is it a bold reimagining of a timeless classic or a gimmicky effort to pull in a crowd and appear edgy?
“Surprisingly, bikers seem to be ruled by the same medieval systems of hierarchy and rank, with codes of conduct and honour,” Lepage explained in the play’s program. “It is a patriarchal system of governance where members show respect and loyalty to their leaders. It is often populated by goodhearted people who have chosen a different and adventurous way of life. But some are also highly skilled when it comes to murdering, drug dealing, arms trafficking as well as countless other illicit activities.”
All true. Guindon says — and fitting for Shakespeare’s bloodiest play.
Stratford is slightly more than an hour’s drive from the tiny community of Shedden, Ont., where eight Bandidos bikers were massacred by their associates in 2006. Things were even bloodier during the Quebec biker wars of the 1990s and early 2000s when 160 people were killed, including 11-year-old Daniel Desrochers, who was a bystander to a bombing.
His death in 1995 and a decade’s worth of carnage, corruption and inquests outraged Quebec society and turned the public firmly against bikers and their gangs. “The challenge for an actor is when playing these types of characters is not to condemn them, but to try to understand their reality,” Lepage, a Quebecer himself, writes in the program.
The worst of it was a bit before Guindon’s era, but still: “There were stabbing scenes that gave me flashbacks to prison wars, gang violence and knife fights, as the whole play was very aggressive.”
Biker gangs have long had the reputation of being all-white affairs. Not so on this stage — Lepage’s Macbeth has several Black actors, including Austin Eckert as Malcolm, Andre Sills as Ross, and David Collins as the old gang leader, Duncan.
That didn’t faze Guindon. Haiti-born Gregory (Picasso) Woolley was affiliated with the Quebec Hells Angels. He was also Guindon’s chess partner when the latter was in Millhaven Penitentiary on the drug case, and Woolley was behind bars for trafficking.
Woolley, whose 2023 murder remains unsolved, was “a gangster and a gentleman,” he said.
There were some authentic nuances to Lepage’s version that were probably missed by many in the audience. Guindon picked up on the significance of patches being pulled from an actor in the opening scene. That rang true to the biker world — although the fictional patches weren’t a genuine biker design, which should have had both a top rocker naming the gang and a bottom rocker for its territory.
But the themes of no mercy, anarchy and revenge were true to life. Guindon was in rapt attention for classic lines from Macbeth, the stressed-out gang leader played by Tom McManus: “It will have blood, they say; blood will have blood.”
So too, when Lucy Peacock’s Lady Macbeth washed her hands of imagined blood, saying: “All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand.”
And for Macbeth’s incredibly bleak Act 5 soliloquy:
“Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.”
Aside from the dialogue, Guindon notes down the attention to detail, like the “impressively constructed” motel that stands in for Macbeth’s castle as the gang’s bunker and the play’s principal set.
And of course, there are the bikes. Back in his day, Guindon’s father Bernie had a custom bike he christened “Wild Thing,” which he used to ride around in his hometown of Oshawa like a conquering hero.
Harley Guindon — who has owned 15 motorcycles so far in his life — now rides a white 131 Harley-Davidson Road-Glide (he says he appreciates its “speed and handling and the way it leans.”) He was impressed with the work of the festival’s Dylan Mundy, who created the six electric bikes ridden onstage — the modifications to resemble 1970s choppers and panheads were “expertly executed,” he said. As was the use of mirrors to create the illusion of a larger crowd of bikers, backed by impressive sound effects.
And it was fun to look around and see the older crowd watching people snorting cocaine — “that part had me looking to the crowd’s reaction in disbelief that the play had taken it there.”
Ultimately, Guindon says, it feels like a play — “I don’t think a Shakespearean play could ever feel real due to the old English” — but it was still “very entertaining” for this ex-outlaw from Oshawa; not just a gimmick to appear edgy.
When it’s all over, he stands without prompting and claps along with everyone else.
“The modernization of Macbeth was impressive and justified the three-hour drive, with production quality that captivated the audience, resulting in a standing ovation,” he writes in his notes.
