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| Do
you see what I prophesy? Home Made Theater’s Macbeth. |
Read
On, Macduff
By James Yeara
Macbeth
By William Shakespeare,
directed by Terry Rabine
Home Made Theater, Through March 2
Shakespeare’s shortest tragedy, Macbeth, has a cursed
reputation. Think of it as Shakespeare’s most dangerous play,
with numerous sword fights between warriors and witches who
frequently curse and engage in rituals that have been said
to actually conjure demons. A staple of American high school
English curricula, Macbeth, like Romeo and Juliet,
has become the conduit into the classics, and Home Made Theater’s
current production of Macbeth is a fine conduit into
a literary classic: Clear, clean and precise, with an attention
to costuming detail and a lighting design that Madame Tussaud
would envy. Every performer stands out pristinely as a museum
exhibit.
This is Shakespeare worthy of the CliffsNotes. It’s a production
that students would enjoy: It keeps the clarity of the lecture
and preserves all the literary devices that make Shakespeare
a hit in the classroom. HMT’s Macbeth is full of fine
stage pictures and precision of diction.
Macbeth
is presented on a bare raised platform with three steps
upstage center and a cyclorama of changing hues (red for the
murder scenes) upstage of the steps. With Michael Blau’s museum-quality
lighting design, which features some clear underlighting for
the witches’ conjuring scenes, this is a by-the-book Macbeth:
You can see all and you can hear all. The sounds of the words
hit with the exactness of raindrops falling on a tin roof,
and with director Terry Rabine’s excellent sound design—never
before have wind, rain, thunder, howling, hooting, crying,
cawing mingled so closely with a text—HMT’s Macbeth
whizzes across the stage with a stunning pace that never slows
for a bothersome twitch of feeling or a hint of emotion. At
two hours running time, you may, as I did, hardly realize
that you saw the play in the first place, so quickly does
the production pass from memory. The economy of movement,
the exactness of speaking and the metaphorical obedience to
Lady Macbeth’s command to “unsex me here” gives this Macbeth
a feel like a Play-Doh replica of a Rodin statue.
Rabine does a remarkable job of keeping his 21-person cast
moving across the stage and blocked into clear, concise groupings
that leave the cast plenty of room for their profiles. The
conventional staging and conceiving will please those who
like their words on the stage as still as the words on the
page, and HMT’s production keeps the essential plot crystal
clear: Macbeth (Jay Cotten) murders his King (Dale McKim)
at the urging of Lady Macbeth (Lezlie Dana) because three
witches (Robin Leary, Bairbre McCarthy, Bonnie Zabinski) prophesy
that Macbeth will be king, and, as king, Macbeth kills many
of his subjects, and ultimately dies at the sword of Macduff
(John O’Neill), who was born by cesarean section.
While Macbeth most definitely does not murder sleep in this
production, there are, however, two moments when some unconventional
staging brings some light onto the motivation and theme of
the play. When Macbeth famously says, “Is this a dagger I
see before me?” the witches, in their underlighted conjuring
squares, manipulate the dagger in front of Macbeth, ultimately
leading him off to where King Duncan rests. And the production
ends not with the thanes cheering the king but with the witches
giving one more “All hail,” which makes their effect again
more potent than such a conventional production would seem
to allow. While Shakespeare & Company’s recent 2002 production
of Macbeth took so many risks and had so many concepts
that it suffocated in a miasma of thought and feelings, HMT’s
Macbeth is like Shakespeare on Ice. It’s clear, well-spaced,
easy to follow, and frigid. Those who fear theater is an alchemy
of blood, sweat, and spit will find all those exorcised from
this production. No demons will be conjured here.
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