To pervert and quote its bard, so foul and fair a Macbeth was never seen.
Until this weekend, that is, when William Shakespeare's famous Jacobean tragedy received a faithful but curiously kitschy treatment in the Shapiro Theater, in which murderous betrayal, tragic ambition and blood-soaked comeuppance abounded despite something wicked plaguing the Hold Thy Peace production. It was as though the Swan of Avon and Ed Wood, the patron saint of B-movie directors, conspired to pen Macbeth as some terrible joke-one that eluded some players and was ignored by others, but that more tellingly, resulted in a very intentional hijacking of one of Shakespeare's gravest dramas.
In this archetypal tale, Macbeth (Alain Ackerman '08), a Scottish noble, encounters the weird sisters (Cat Kearns '09, Sarah Krevsky '08 and Sage Shepperd '06), a trio of witches who predict that he will one day become King, but that his countryman Banquo's (Sam Zelitch '09) line will eventually claim that throne. With the encouragement of Macbeth's ambitious wife (Allison Vanouse '09), the plot soon takes a regicidal twist and he assumes Scotland's stewardship, his enemies Macduff (Naftali Ejdelman '07) and Duncan (Erik Potter '07), the King's rightful heir, having fled to England. The bodies pile up as tension and a shared dementia build, and, like in all of Shakespeare's tragedies, Macbeth's tragic flaw-in this case, ambition-delivers his just desserts, in a bloody battle for Scotland's rule.
According to director Joshua Sheena '07, Hold Thy Peace only had two days to assemble Macbeth's set-an effectively eerie trio of bark-like pillars and the occasional table and chairs-and prepare its technical elements. But the resulting deficiencies-poorly cued sound, shaky lighting-were not solely responsible for the production's campiness. Nor were its over-stylized sword fights. There was something more insidious going on.
When Macbeth sought further counsel from the weird sisters in the play's second act, three apparitions-two were bodiless heads of actors; another appeared to be a ragdoll-materialized at the back of the stage. Shrouded in darkness, each offered ominous tidings and advice, but their voices, masked by robotic vocal effects-captured more convincingly the 1950s vision of the future than the specters of Shakespeare's imagination.
Later, Macduff claimed victory in battle by producing his enemy's decapitated head-only it was the blood-drenched, mannequin variety, with no attempt made at realism. And in one of the play's heaviest scenes, the discovery of King Duncan's murder, Ackerman and Potter appeared shirtless, the former with magic-marker muscles stenciled on his chest- according to Sheena, it was a closing-night aberration. When Ackerman declared with a smirk, "Let's briefly put on manly readiness," the audience failed to contain its laughter. By the second act, such outbursts were endemic.
These individual hijackings of pathos were reprehensible; that they tainted several outstanding performances was egregious. Take Vanouse's stellar portrayal of Lady McDuff, in which she deftly handled Macbeth's most challenging role with nuance and poise. Here, her delivery was eloquent and rhythmic, as her character orchestrated the first act's events and mired in psychosis in the second. Within single scenes, her dialogue bubbled with mirth before waxing erotic as she teased her husband's ambitions.
Doubling as a weird sister and one of Macbeth's porters-cum-assassins, Krevsky also actedadmirably. In the latter role, she delivered a famous monologue from Macbeth's castle, Inverness. Petite, squeaky and ostentatious, she celebrated alcohol like Lewis Carroll's inebriated Dormouse might, in one of the Bard's classic comedic offerings to the Elizabethan groundling.
Even these performances could not compensate for Macbeth's transgressions. Simply put, some cast and crew members-a minority of them, for certain-did not take the play seriously and as such, its whole suffered. Far too often here, kitsch subverted gravitas and childish indulgence replaced professionalism. A "double, double toil and trouble," indeed.