At its heart, the story of Macbeth is about the serious havoc that all-encompassing greed and ambition wreak on society. This held true when William Shakespeare wrote the play in the early 17th century. And it holds true even now, when political leaders are willing to forsake all values of decency to stay in power, business families are ripped apart due to rivalries, and even the average working person sometimes stabs a colleague in the back to rise up the professional ladder. We actually don't need to look too far beyond the shenanigans taking place in our own state government for proof. There doesn't need to be killing and bloodshed for the plot to resonate, because what we have in Maharashtra at the moment is a murder of democracy, or so some say.

It's keeping this contemporary relevance in mind that Bollywood personality Rajat Kapoor decided to adapt the play, after taking up three other Shakespeare plays earlier — Hamlet, King Lear and As You Like It. His production, called What is Done is Done, will be staged this weekend and stars actors like Vinay Pathak and Ranvir Shorey. Kapoor tells us that all the characters in the adaptation are dressed like clowns, which makes this part of a trilogy of sorts along with Hamlet and King Lear, since the director's version of those plays had actors in similar costumes. But he clarifies, "I had a clear idea from the beginning that I was going to have scary clowns in Macbeth, since that's keeping in line with the plot's themes. It was a really dark play that Shakespeare had written."