There’s nothing particularly new about reframing William Shakespeare’s Scottish play around the hero’s notoriously ruthless and manipulative wife, Lady Macbeth. Zinnie Harris’s Macbeth (An Undoing), which played at Brooklyn’s Theatre for a New Audience two years ago, went so far as to have Lady Macbeth seize control of the kingdom after Duncan’s death as her husband wallowed in remorse for his murderous turn and sought to scrub out, out those damned spots on his conscience. Now Whitney White, the uber-talented director of recent hits like Jaja’s African Hair Braiding and Liberation, takes center stage in a musical called Macbeth in Stride that also seeks to center Lady Macbeth’s point of view. (The show is now playing at BAM’s Harvey Theater.)

In White’s version, Lady M appears as the lead singer of an R&B girl group, dressed in a bedazzled black body suit (costumes by Qween Jean) and backed by three singers (Phoenix Best, Holli’ Conway, and Ciara Alyse Harris) who also play the witches as well as a kind of sassy Greek chorus to question our heroine about her choices, including the notion of “reworking a 400-year-old play for your own ego.” They help her home in on her desire for power — and to calibrate her personal and romantic ambitions given the reality of her life as a Black woman. But it’s hard to see her choice of husband as a love match: Charlie Thurston’s Macbeth, clad in black leather, seems like the ultimate white-boy wannabe Brooklyn hipster, a guy so out of touch that he plays the accordion. Yes, the accordion. (In one cringey exchange that could be straight out of a ’70s blaxploitation film, she asks, “Who’s the man?” and he replies, “I’m the man” — and then she concludes, “Yeah, you are.”)

But this is the guy who will make her a queen so why wait for true love? White is a commanding stage performer with a rich voice that’s capable of extended falsetto high notes. No doubt she wrote the show’s score — an artful pastiche of pop, R&B, and gospel with somewhat prosaic and repetitive lyrics — with her vocal range in mind. And the show is a fitting showcase for her prodigious talents.

But the production, directed by Tyler Dobrowsky and Taibi Magar, lacks a clear sense of purpose to hold our attention over 90 minutes. It doesn’t flesh out the full plot of Shakespeare’s original, instead dispensing with pretty much every character except the Macbeths, the weird sisters, and brief mentions of Duncan, the king whose murder allows for their ascent to the throne. (I pity any theatergoer who’s unfamiliar with the Bard’s text trying to piece together the original plot.) Nor does it attempt to radically overhaul the material, as Zinnie’s play did, to recenter the female characters and get us to truly see a familiar story in a fresh light. Instead, White offers snippets of key monologues as well as a running commentary on all those widely acknowledged flaws in Shakespeare’s treatment of female characters — and questions why modern actresses still long to play roles that come with a giant asterisk. They’re meaty for their time but remain thin gruel by modern standards. As White notes of Lady M, “Her death doesn’t even happen on stage.” White casts a bright, melodic spotlight on these shortcomings — but the best she can offer is critique rather than corrective. ★★★☆☆

MACBETH IN STRIDE
BAM Harvey Theater, Brooklyn
Running time: 90 minutes (no intermission)
Tickets on sale through April 27 for $29 to $90