A Few of Your Favorite Things: Witches on Stilts

Let's start with the honorable mentions: Fiona Shaw's feat of making sense of every word of Beckett's Happy Days; the Elevator Repair Service's Gatz, the finest stage adaptation of a classic book ever; Omar in The Wire; the one-liners of the underwhelmed Michael Kors. But since a good Macbeth is a rare thing to be treasured, I vote for the exhilaratingly epic and wildly unique production of "Macbeth: Who is that Bloodied Man," an outdoor spectacle by the Polish company Biuro Podrozy that played the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Among its series of dark, virtuoso images are the three witches on stilts surrounded by roaring onstage motorcycles, the charred body of Lady Macbeth underneath fireworks and a wheel barrel of skulls. I'm still having nightmares.

--Jason Zinoman