Macbeth, Teller style

[alexxkay]

Sunday morning, early, myself, kestrell, londo, juldea, freerange_snark, and B all headed out on a road trip to see some bloody good Shakespeare.

Conversation between londo and myself in the AM:
L: Is there a reason I should use one shower or the other?
A: I wouldn't recommend trying to use both at once; likely to get messy.
L: Yeah, I haven't quite got that whole 'bilocation' thing down yet.

It turned out that freerange_snark had got even less sleep than me, so she elected to drive the whole way down, hoping (correctly, as it turned out) that I could then handle the whole way back. Both trips were free of incident, just lengthy.

Much lively conversation on the way down; less so on the way back as people zoned out and/or slept. Why *is* there a park in NJ named "Cheesequake"?

The show itself was excellent, though perhaps not worth quite the expense and effort that we expended to see it. If I had the choice to make over again, I might choose differently, but I certainly don't *regret* having gone. It was a unique theatrical experience, and it's hard to balance those against things like time and money.

Spoilers follow, in case you care.

There was about as much magic as I expected. That is to say, everywhere that a magic trick could enhance the story, there was one, and no more. Even in this, one of Shakespeare's most FX-laden stories, that turns out to be only five or six occasions. I managed to see through the misdirection on one of Banquo's ghostly exits, only to then be totally taken in by a triple fakeout on his next entrance. Kes will testify how I jumped in my seat :)

I *was* surprised at how little blood there was. Well, relative to my expectations, anyways. For a modern production, there was a hell of a lot more of it than typical. They did reach the Michael Anderson criterion for "*authentic* Shakespeare" ("when they have to mop the blood off the stage"), though only for one moment at the very end. In fact, worries about slippage may have had something to do with the lack of splashing blood for the earlier portions of the show. Some of the more significant fights left bloody wounds on the combatants, but MacDuff's family dies bloodlessly.

When they *did* have blood, it was used to very good effect. Seyton announces the death of Lady Macbeth while staring at his own hand, covered in her blood. Macbeth nuzzles that hand lovingly, leaving a smear of red on his cheek that stays with him until his death. It's a literally awe-ful way of maintaining the presence of Lady M in both Macbeth's mind and that of the audience, even after the actress is long gone.

Lady M stole most of her scenes, as happens in most good productions. Well, perhaps 'stole' is the wrong word, since it seems so correct for her to do so. It takes a poor production indeed for Lady M to not get a huge laugh at "You have displaced the mirth." Not an inherently funny line, but context and timing make for a big laugh if you don't screw up.

The costuming and makeup were largely subdued, but served the story needs well. I say 'largely', on account of the Weird Sisters being *very* weird, and more than a little decayed and corpse-like. The way that the rest of the costumes were fairly mundane helped make theirs stand out as otherworldly.

Lighting was very good, and sound was fucking brilliant. Both were willing to go way over the top to illustrate a character's mental state, yet subdued and subtle where appropriate. The shadowy percussionist, an indistinct shape lurking in his darkened cage at the rear of the stage, produced marvelous cacophonies.

The Porter rocked the house. They gave him lots of new dialog, but if any character wants to speak with a contemporary voice, it's him. He interacted a great deal with the audience, and helped shore up two of the big themes of this production. Firstly, that the world of living men *is* Hell, and secondly that we, the audience, were its Devils. Several characters have lines about being watched by Devils, and all of these were directed out at us, watching.

This blurring of the boundaries between stage space and audience space happened several times over the course of the production. Notably, when Malcolm is rallying his forces before the battle, those forces were arrayed throughought the theater, surrounding the audience, and pacing back and forth like restless tigers. The audience may be complicit in letting the bad man do bad deeds, but they still demand his blood to assuage their consciences.

The swords were not terribly realistic, being extremely shiny. But they used that shine well in the lighting design, both to call attention to the weapons themselves, and to use the reflected rays of light in interesting manners.

The fighting was... competent. They certainly did much better than average, but knowing rickthefightguy has left me with extremely high standards.

The severed heads were, sadly, lame. Now I know that this particular Renaissance stage trope is extremely hard to pull off. The head can't look fake, especially if it's supposed to be a character we've seen while alive. On the other hand, it can't help but look fake: real dead people don't look... 'real', any more. Lots of productions equivocate the heads in some way or another, but I had hoped for better from this one. They had this idea that if they briefly showed you a severed head inside a brown sack, then that would make all further lumpy brown sacks 'read' as severed heads. Didn't work, at least for me. They had a semi-clever set concept for Act 2 that I didn't recognize until near the end of the show: Macbeth's ramparts would be liberally covered in severed heads to viscerally show how tyrranous he has been. But I just wondered why there were all those sacks up there.

The best severed head I have yet heard of (didn't actually see it myself) was during a BU production of Edward the II, where in one rehearsal or performance, there was blood dripping out the neck of the model head. They decided that that was too over-the-top for their production, but I think it would have added a lot to this one.

The pacing was extremely tight throughout. I didn't notice many cuts (aside from Hecate, and lots of people cut that bit), but they doubled several scenes, with foreground and background action happening in different places. Sometimes these were pre-existing scenes, but they opened with a nifty addition. The Witches speech happens *around* the end of Macbeth slaughtering the rebels, so you get to see first hand both what a great fighter he is, and what the "hurly-burly" is about.

A thought about Macbeth that has little to do with this production, but which occurred to me while discussing it with the others. How good a king *was* Duncan? Macbeth says he's a great guy, but he's got a huge guilt complex. Other people who talk about Duncan do so in front of Duncan himself, or in front of his heirs, and may not be completely forthright. What we *know* about Duncan is that he just had to put down a rebellion, which doesn't put him in a very flattering light. Was he as much of a tyrant as Macbeth, facing foes of his own creation? That's one way to tell the story. Another, perhaps more interesting tack, would be to ascribe the rebellion to Duncan being *too* good a man -- too trusting and merciful, one who invites being taken advantage of.

The play has an interesting attitude towards honesty. The forces of Hell say nothing but scrupulously true statements. The arguable hero of the play, Malcolm, has by far his biggest scene entirely concerned with how good a liar he is. Perhaps what we have here is a progression: a king who is too honest, yielding to a king who is too dishonest, yielding to a king who forms a synthesis by understanding how effective politics require a mix of truth and lies.