This summer, SYNC will be providing two free teen audiobooks each week from April 26th to July 25th. Each week will focus on a specific theme, pairing a classic YA title with a more modern YA title. These two titles will be available to download for free this week only (from 6/28 to 7/4) at the SYNC website. The tenth week will start on Thursday, June 28th with Macbeth . The theme for the tenth week is “The weight of guilt.”
In one of Shakespeare’s shortest plays, a Scots noble, inspired by witches, murders to become king and then loses himself in brutality. James Marsters and Joanne Whalley, as Macbeth and his Lady, are both quite good, if rarely exciting or remarkable. Whalley hits that mark more often. There are, by turns, some flatness and overacting in the lesser roles. There’s too much forced laughter among the supernumeraries and too much grunting during fights we cannot see. Still, the overall production is effective. Without standout performances, the play takes the lead. The music and sound effects, though occasionally overdone, help build a sense of dread and things gone very wrong. Text, performances, and sound combine to deliver an affecting tale of tragic horror.
Narrator Gabe Wicks evokes both old-fashioned Appalachian hospitality and barely concealed menace in this suspenseful story. The audiobook’s unnamed narrator invites the listener to sit a spell as he slowly unfolds the story of what happens when four teenagers bring the wrath of a supposed witch down on their sleepy town. Wicks paces the story perfectly by maintaining an affable conversational tone while allowing dread to creep in as the people of the town grapple with the possibility of the supernatural and their own moral failings. Though he doesn’t differentiate character voices, Wicks gives the listener a good sense of who is speaking.