You can't go wrong with a multi-voice production of ... any book, really. I swoon for full casts. This is no exception. If you like Shakespeare and the vibe of listening to a radio show, you'll enjoy this.

I mean, you can't go wrong with Macbeth but I wouldn't recommend this audiobook, sadly; I love a full-cast recording but I felt that (nearly) everyone was miscast here; I found the performances very ham-fisted and showed a lack of familiarity with Shakespearean acting (though I haven't researched anyone on the cast, so, sincere apologies if any of them has a career doing exactly that).

A fantastic production of Shakespeare's classic play with a show-stopping cast of narrators! Bravo!!

Snagged a copy of this full-cast audiobook (it really is the best way to listen) and while Macbeth is not my favourite of Shakespeare's tragedies, it's as good as I remember. It feels much shorter than its 2.5 hours, and the only thing I like better is seeing it live.

The audiobook is narrated by Scott Brick, Käthe Mazur, Dion Graham, Steven Anthony Jones, Simon Vance, Carol Monda, Paula Parker, Maggi-Meg Reed, Johnny Heller, and JD Jackson, all of whom are great; I really enjoy Scott Brick in particular, and Käthe Mazur's Lady Macbeth was rad.

I received a copy of this audiobook for free from NetGalley and Dreamscape Media in exchange for an honest, voluntary review.

An excellent full cast reading of Macbeth. I’m not a big audiobook reader, but since I’m fairly familiar with the story of Macbeth, I decided to try this one. It was hard for me to follow at times; I think it would’ve been easier for me to read it while listening to it as well. However the cast performance is quite good.

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for allowing me to listen to this audiobook in exchange for an honest review.

As an adult, I've wanted to learn to love Shakespeare as many of my friends do. Reading his plays doesn;t do it for me. Listening to really good voices, stage voices, act out the play while I listen feels like a luxury. I have no idea if these were readers or trained actors but for the most part, they are terrific. I know the story and that helps.
My only complaint is that Lady Macbeth tends to whisper too much and it is very hard to hear her when she is whispering. Otherwise, even the use of old English is agreeable as the actors put inflections so that the full sentence is obvious what the meaning is.

I recommend listening to this book as both a way of learning about the play or reliving a performance you might have seen.

What an excellent audio version of Macbeth! I initially wanted to listen to this because some of my favorite audiobook narrators are featured characters. All of the orators are quite skilled and the audiobook immediately captured my attention. I especially liked the casting choices for the witches. An extremely well done audiobook of Macbeth!

Thank you Dreamscape Media and NetGalley for providing this audiobook ARC.

I received a free ARC of this audiobook by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This review is going to focus on the audiobook and not the story itself. It's Macbeth, aka The Scottish Play, and has been around since 1606. Many aspects of Shakespeare's original play has made it into pop culture. And I'm sure thousands of papers and reviews have been written about how greed and moral corruption was the downfall of Macbeth. So I'm not going to throw in my opinions into that vast ocean of thought.

This was my first time listening to a Shakespearean play on an audiobook and there were pros and cons. The pro side is that Shakespeare's plays are meant to be listened to. Reading the lines in a book doesn't quite capture the poetry in his writing. His works were plays and not books and you can miss some of the subtilty of his verses when you're merely reading it off the page. If a student is struggling to read and comprehend Shakespeare it's long been recommended that they try to listen to it instead of merely trying to read it. This audiobook brought that aspect to life. But..... I have a lot of cons about this dramatic recording.

I don't think Macbeth is the easiest Shakespearean play to translate into an audiobook. It's a lot of Scottish noblemen talking about political intrigue with most of the action happening off stage. Where this audiobook struggles is that I found it very difficult, having only read Macbeth once 17 years ago, to differentiate the male actors' voices and follow along with who was speaking. In a play you can recognize who is speaking by how they are dressed or how they look, and when reading the play you have the names of the characters written in front of the lines for you to follow. Here you had neither and it was a struggle. There was very little in the voices to tell them apart. Plus several actors played multiple roles. If a scene had more than 3 noblemen in it, I had no clue who was speaking. I wish the audiobook had made each character's voice distinctive so it'd be easier to follow along with. In the end most of the male characters got muddled up in the story except for Macbeth and Mcduff. They could've used younger voices to represent the sons of the thanes, different accents, and different voices that were recognizable. I also found it bizarre that all the voice actors were American (I believe) and that there wasn't a single Scottish accent to be found. Although, that might have decreased the comprehensibility even further.

Unless you're very familiar with Macbeth that you can follow it by heart, I don't recommend this audio recording of the play. 2 out of 5 stars.

From an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher. This is the first audiobook I've had from Netgalley and it worked flawlessly in their app, playing through my car audio. I shall definitely look for more audiobooks from them.

This was a multi-performer audiobook featuring Scott Brick, Dion Graham, Johnny Heller, JD Jackson, Steven Anthony Jones, Käthe Mazur, Carol Monda, Paula Parker, Maggi-Meg Reed, and Simon Vance. With the exception of Johnny Heller (who I do not like as a narrator) and Simon Vance, who I know is British, I'd never heard of any of these people, but there wasn't a Scot among them at least as judged from the voices. Most sounded American which for me took away from the entire story.

I know Shakespeare himself probably didn't hire Scots to perform this back in the day, but he did not live in an age of #OwnVoices! Neither was there any real Scots music. Normally I'm not a fan of music in audiobooks - unless the book happens to be about music and the audio contributes positively. Otherwise, I'd rather have just the voices. The music is an irritation, especially here where it contributes nothing and does nothing to add atmosphere.

The real tragedy of Macbeth though, is that this play doesn't remotely represent the actual story of this Scot - Duncan, King of Alba - which is a game of thrones all of itself. Macbeth didn't murder Duncan unless you want to loosely label Duncan's death in battle, fighting Macbeth's forces as murder. Macbeth didn't descend into madness but took the throne after defeating the rather paranoid Duncan in battle and he ruled for almost two decades before being killed in battle himself. His wife is barely mentioned in history and certainly didn't pursue the evil path laid out for her in this misogynistic work of Shakespeare's. But let's side-step that somewhat thorny issue and consider this as a work of art.

When looked at in that light, the main problem is that this is a poorly-written play. Its brevity is the only good thing about it. I know Shakespeare is all-but worshipped, but not by me. I do agree that he came up with a nice turn of phrase here and there, but most of his work is ripped-off from others, and is tedious to listen to, and way too flowery. If we today had never heard of these works, and someone wrote his plays now, exactly as he has written them, they wouldn't have become renowned at all. For the most part they would have died the death if not been laughed out of town, and they would never have been heard of again. What does that tell you? I don't really know why he rose to such heights, but I think Shakespeare is way overblown.

Nonetheless I was interested in listening to this since, while I have attended some Shakespeare plays live, and seen others done as movies, my only experience of this one had been via a comic book story, Toil and Trouble by Mairghread Scott, Kelly Matthews, Nichole Matthews. I reviewed that as a worthy read some two or three years ago. I'm sorry to report disappointment in this audio effort, though. The prevalence of American accents rather took away from the suspension of disbelief, especially Heller's which just irritates me, I have to say. But the play's the thing and even the Americanization of this might have been tolerable had the play itself not been so god-awful! I'm sorry, but it was. It was lousy.

The best exemplification of this for me was in a speech at the beginning of Scene 8, wherein Siward learns that his son was killed. Here's the exact quote:

Ross: Your son, my lord, has paid a soldier's debt: He only lived but till he was a man; The which no sooner had his prowess confirmed In the unshrinking station where he fought, But like a man he died.
Siward: Then he is dead?

Seriously? That's just one example. I'm sorry, but I cannot stand that sort of stupid writing unless it's done purposefully in a parody, say, in which case it would have been funny.

The entire play, mercifully short as it is, is one long tedious ramble like this, with florid language over-used and no real poetry at all. It's entirely unrealistic and inauthentic, and it's a chore to get through. The over-acting and Americanization of it did nothing to help. There was a bigger and better story to be told here and Shakespeare missed it, while George RR Martin seems to have had a much better grasp of this sort of thing! I cannot commend this audiobook as a worthy listen.

A beautiful version of the classic Shakespearean tragedy Macbeth. The characters are classically trained which makes their performance even more superb. William Shakespeare was a playwright, meaning all of his work (plays), was meant to be enjoyed with a more physical presence. The play incorporated not just the sight of the characters, but their sound and their energy into telling a story. With an audiobook, there are no visual cues, or visual at all for that matter. Conducting a play through only audio also makes it more difficult for the energy of the scenes to be conveyed. The cast of this audiobook did an excellent job of bringing energy and emotion to their voices as well as the characters they portrayed. When compared to other audio versions of the play, I must say I enjoyed this version better than, say, the No Fear Shakespeare audio version of Macbeth.

The voice acting in this audiobook of Macbeth was really good! I listened to the audio while I read along in the book. It helped me understand the language and colloquialisms of Shakespeare whenever I came across an unfamiliar word that I did not understand. The meaning became clear just by the inflection in the voice of the actor.

This audio also includes a bit of music before some of the scenes, along with ambient noise.

My only suggestion is that they do more of this rather than have the narrator read the words, such as "bell sounds". Just have a bell sound, and do not read the stage directions in this case.

I first read this play in high school, which was sheer torture. Then suffered through it again in a Shakespeare class taught by the most boring, horrid professor I ever had. His class consisted of him reading the works of Shakespeare out loud to us in a droning monotone, then giving ridiculous multiple choice quizzes as tests. I came to loathe Shakespeare after an entire semester of Prof Monotone.
But, The Scottish Play contains some very memorable scenes and quotes -- quotes I use, despite my lack of enjoyment in previous endeavors regarding Shakespeare. When I saw this audiobook available for review, I decided to clean the slate and give William's works another go. It fits in with my quest to read whatever strikes my fancy and to revisit things I read earlier in life to see if my opinion in my 50's remains the same.

When it comes to literature, I always go all in. I grabbed up an annotated ebook edition of the play, found a film version online to stream, and queued up the audio book. I read a scene and its annotations on my kindle, then listened to the scene, and finally watched actors perform it. And....

I have changed my mind. I do not hate Shakespeare....merely the way in which his plays were presented to me in a school setting.

This play is wonderful! Heroic Macbeth descends into unchecked ambition, evil and madness. Human nature run amok....all started by 3 witches telling him what his future holds. But....he doesn't listen to all they say....just the part where he will be king. #mistake.

The audiobook (by DreamScape Media) is just short of 2.5 hours long. It's full cast and has some great narrators, including Scott Brick (one of my favorites!). It's definitely high quality audio and very entertaining. All of the narrators are top notch!

I'm glad I decided to give this play another go....my opinion is completely changed. I think I will re-visit Hamlet next....then Othello! Great stories that I never really gave a fighting chance due to circumstances that had nothing to do with the plays themselves.

**I listened to a review copy of this audio book from DreamScape Media. All opinions expressed are entirely my own. No kings were stabbed during the writing of this review. Advice: Do not listen to prophesies spoken by weird old hags....it can have lasting consequences.**

It's hard to do a terrible job when you have such solid source material. I think that the variety of voices would make this useful for a student who has a hard time reading the text itself. Sometimes hearing it helps.

I think the stage directions being read aloud threw me off a bit and took me out of the story.

Overall, an enjoyable listen.

I very much enjoyed this audiobook version featuring a wonderful full cast of voice actors giving strong performances of this famous play. I enjoyed the actors that played the parts of the Sargent, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. However, I would like to mention that all of the actors did a very good job. The pace of the play was well done and broken up well with the witches scenes between each act. (Although the end of their chants got to the point that I had to skip them each time. I just couldn't hear that sound anymore.) All in all, I would recommend this fantastic audiobook. It was performed by exceptional, well experienced, clear voiced actors, and was masterfully produced. It was 2.5 hours long and I think most audiences would enjoy listening to it. I give it 5 stars.

I would like to thank #NetGalley and #DreamScapeMedia for a copy of this audiobook in exchange for my honest review. All opinions are my own.

Macbeth is my favorite Shakespeare tragedy, but this audiobook fell flat. The only scenes where the full cast really enhanced the play were in the scenes with the witches where having multiple voices helped bring the play to life. I was hoping the rest of the play would be the same, but it just wasn’t. It felt more like the cast was simply reading it than performing it. As if they were reading a novel instead of a play.

In this Shakespeare classic, a man hears a prophecy and sets out to make it come true, leaving a trail of bodies in his wake.

I have listened to a lot of Shakespeare audio. This one doesn't stand out as particularly good or particularly bad. The actors portraying Banquo, Malcom, and MacDuff gave strong performances; Macbeth and Lady Macbeth were middling, and the others didn't stand out to me particularly. Some of the lines were delivered slowly enough that I would forget the beginning of the line by the time I got to the end -- the sergeant at the very beginning in particular.

This is the only Shakespeare audio I've listened to that included the stage directions, which was an interesting choice. It's also one of the few that didn't include sound effects, save for the Macbeth / MacDuff fight at the very end of the play. I found myself missing some of those audio cues (the sound of hurried footsteps is more descriptive than "Exit Messenger"...). The same phrase of music played at the beginning of every scene, and that got repetitive by the end of the play.

Verdict: It's good, but it's not anything new. Some strong performances make it worth listening to. 3.5 stars.

Macbeth

I haven’t read Macbeth in a few years, so was excited to see this audiobook version available. I enjoyed each of the voice actors and was so glad that the production wasn’t overdone with sound effects and other distractions. The occasional music between scenes was nice and appropriately done. The multi-voice narration, clearly performed by exceptionally experienced actors, was wonderful. Lady Macbeth’s performance is especially noteworthy. The pace was not too slow, nor too fast, and the quick 2.5 hour listening time make this a perfect pick for the classroom, even with students who are inexperienced with Shakespeare and the play’s language.

As someone who has worked in theatre for many years, with a degree or two in dramatic literature in particular, I’m familiar with Macbeth. To say the least. It actually happens to be one of my favorite of Shakespeare’s plays (and one of the first I ever saw live, as a wee tot once upon a time). So getting to listen to a new audio recording is all about the cast and the choices they make, not the text. (I’d give the text five stars, too. Good job, Mr. Shakespeare.) Fortunately, this particular cast is a treat to listen to. It’s a very clear production - nothing feels unnecessarily rushed, everyone enunciates extremely well, and minimal existing stage directions are read by a stage managerial voice - but not at all lacking in theatricality and drama. Kathe Mazur as Lady Macbeth is especially noteworthy, delivering a great rendition of her famous speech, and I also loved the use of music between scenes. Given the crisp clarity of the production, I’d highly recommend this to anyone who wants or needs to become familiar with the play, such as students, who might struggle with reading flat text on the page.


Thanks to NetGalley and Dreamscape Media for the advance review copy! (And thanks for the opportunity to say “I got an early copy of Macbeth - yeah, that one.”)

Bloodthirsty book. I like the idea of this audiobook with many narrators almost like listening to a movie. The narration is split up by scenes and acts like a regular play with someone setting the scene.

What did I like? Macbeth was amazing but I had a hard time understanding Lady Macbeth because of her voice. This isn’t like most narrations since it has many narrators.

Would I recommend or buy? I’d love to listen to all the plays this way! Wonderful job! Highly recommend this audiobook!

I received a complimentary copy to listen and voluntarily left a review!