This simple play may shock you: Natasha's Dream is a young orphan’s retelling of her upbringing in rural Russia magnifing the class divide. Playwright Yaroslava Pulinovich was born in Omsk, Russia in 1989 and is well-known in the Russian theater – her work showcased at New Drama Festival, Moscow's Playwright and Director Center, and the Kiselev Young Spectator Theatre in Saratov – but this play, in John Freedman’s translation, has only been read and performed a handful of times in the United States. According to critic Oleg Loevsky, Natasha’s Dream is "the reason for people to work in theatre."

Unlike Mean Girls and Heathers, MacBitch features adult actors mimicking teenage girls with a “we lived through this” sensibility that is unafraid to go full slapstick. Macbeth’s archetypes are mixed with stereotypical teen movie tropes, and the script shifts gears between plainspoken contemporary dialogue and classic poetic verse. Many of the modern updates to the source material are clever gifts that keep giving, like the three witches’ use of "cootie catcher" paper fortune tellers as black-magic talismans, or John Carpenter-inspired visual tricks employed in scene transitions.

In the Macbeth role of “Maxine,” we have Lauren Hayes, who has done legit Shakespeare before (San Francisco Shakespeare Festival’s Hamlet, 2015) and it really shows. She’s got a technical talent for delivering iambic pentameter credibly to the modern ear, and her comfort with both highbrow and lowbrow elements keeps this curious mashup afloat... 
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... If you’re up for a bawdy but very smart comedic Shakespeare adaptation, the Exit Theatre is the damned spot to be out at for the next two weekends.