taschoene did me a major solid, taking me to see what most are colloquially calling "Teller's Macbeth" the the Folger Theater yesterday.

(Tom, feel free to chime in in the comments or point to any post you make. I'd be interested to see what you think after sleeping on it.)

Let me get a couple of extremely minor cavils out of the way:

A. Tom and I were seated separately, in equally semi-craptastic seats on either side of the house, way near the front and against the walls. This was a function of show popularity, ticket expense, and seat availability. As he was paying for them (and I still owe him a couple coverings of the "pizza tithe" to recompense him), I cannot really complain. However...

B. Our seats blocked my view of stage right and Tom's view of stage left slightly. Just a enough to be irritating. Also, our positions didn't allow us really good views of the inner above and inner below. (Also also, I could see Banquo's ghost standing behind a pillar for one of his vanishings, and -- more unfortunately -- Tom's got a lesser impact on the Pepper's Ghost "Is this a dagger I see before me?" scene.

C. Also as a function of A, our respective positions in the house placed us "too close to the stage" and "too close to the speakers" at the same time, which made discerning the electronically-modified voices of the Weird Sisters difficult. Their real voices and their manipulated voices overlapped a bit. Two rows in and two seats back (even in such a small house) would have made a major improvement.

D. The climactic duel between Macbeth and Macduff, at this performance, was slightly lackluster compared to previous swordplay in the show. This is probably a function mostly of fatigue, but it was exacerbated by following the freaking brilliant fight between Macbeth and Young Siward that happened immediately before (including a kickass practical arm-breaking effect).


All minor nits, really.

Onto the good stuff (and there's a lot of it):

The Player in Stoppard's Rosie & Gildy Fall Down Go Boom says, "Blood is compulsory." And in this production of Macbeth, indeed this holds true. Plenty of gore here (often intriguingly blocked, businessed, or summoned from the ether with illusionist effects -- yay!). Plenty of magic, horror, clashes of steel, and dark humor as well.

It. Was. Glorious.

What I think is key to this production is summed up in a single word: fun. Perhaps an odd word to use when discussing a tragedy, but maybe not.

There was a lot of fun invested in all aspects of it: costume, cutlery, set, sound & lighting design; the staging of the various vanishments and mysticisms of ghosts and witches; the playing up of the abundant dark humor within the text; the wild physicality of the actors' duels, murders, and rushing across the stage; and -- of course! -- the energy of the actors' performances.

Let me step through that paragraph for more focused comments.

I quite liked the costumes -- an interesting mix of khaki kilts (not plaids), cable-knit sweaters, biker boots, muscle shirts, leather jackets, and white dress shirts. They gave a very "post-apocalyptic Rob Roy" vibe to the show.

Intriguingly, there was an interesting bit during the appearance of Banquo's ghost during the revels where Macbeth's court is in tightly buttoned dress white shirts and long dress "skirts" -- and red Macbeth armbands. This costuming had two important effects: it gave an almost Fascistic tenor to the scene, and also aided in the repeated production and vanishing -- and one amazing transformation (see below) -- illusions of the ghost.

The cutlery design was definitely "fantasy swords" more than anything -- Middle-Earth meets Klingon. I dug it, this to me, added to the "this ain't history or the real world, kids" vibe. All of the blades seemed pretty solid, and rang nicely when clashed.

The set was fairly stark, but evocative. Lots of dark metal composing the inner above and below, steps to either side of the stage, both leading up to the inner above, a few notable movable pieces to set the scene (the throne, the mirror, the cauldron). Remarkably compact, given the needed space for fights and magic and debates.

Truly remarkable sound design. The music was all timpani, cymbals, bells, and xylophone (?). Freaking eerie, I tells ya. And the sound cues for "weirdness here" and "doom!" were very appropos. (As noted above, given my seat, the Weird Sisters' vocal effects didn't work as well as they could have for me.)

The lighting design was really solid. The cues for "I am monologuing now" and "weirdness-time" (respectively) smash-cut into you, or slowly crept up on you. Nice.

There's a lot of magic in this production, and I don't just mean what's on the page. I'm talking about illusion -- stage magic. Really well done vanishing and production all throughout the play, the excellent Pepper's Ghost effect mentioned at the top of this post, and a really spiffy combo of penetration and levitation with the spirits coming out of the Weird Sisters' cauldron.

And since we're talking about the cauldron, the cauldron scene was very creepy (but oddly joyous), with a driving, thumping performance by the Weird Sisters. Crazy. Loud. Thudding. Shrill. Freaky and deaky.

There was even a neat "Rule of Three" violation usage with the production and vanishing of Banquo's ghost -- twice he appeared and disappeared on Macbeth's throne while Macbeth raged, and the audience slowly caught onto how the illusion was worked, but the third time, as the players explicitly formed up around the throne (and the audience turned their eyes towards it), he appeared stage right.

This kicked off the beginning of my absolute favorite effect of the night: a transformation. While Macbeth is wrestling and choking Banquo's ghost around the stage, the ghost transforms into Malcom Ross. Crackerjack timing. Horror-inducing. Ends with a dark comedy laugh-line, too. Fantabulous, no lie.

Speaking of the humor, there's quite a bit of it sprinkled throughout the play. From the obvious Porter sequence to the lunatic ravings to the deadpan understatements in the face of tragedy, there's a lot of laughing... with a dark edge. One of the bits I liked quite a lot(but couldn't fully appreciate the performance of, as it happened stage right and was somewhat blocked from my view) was Macbeth's discovery that Macduff was from his mother's womb untimely ripp'd. Macbeth just kind of collapses here, in a total "I am so boned!" moment.

There is a lot of running, jumping, hacking, slashing, and stabbing in this play. Nice use of the house space, too. The majority of the physical performances were very well done, my comments on D above notwithstanding. Two other bits I really grooved on: 1) the extremely violent stabbing of Young Macduff, which was visceral and shocking, but not gory (and the murderer swinging the child's corpse around by the scruff of his as he walked offstage); and 2) the murder of Banquo, unlike all the other fights in the show, happens around Macbeth on his throne, swiches into slo-mo until his throat gets slit (then there's spurting blood everywhere in real-time), then Banquo collapses against the back of the throne, twitching and spitting up blood, as Fleance escapes.

All of the actors kicked ass. Two shout-outs:
1. I liked Ian Merrill Peakes as Macbeth, who brought menace, humor, and madness to the stage, and yet retained -- for all his crimes -- a certain likeability to Macbeth. You can despise the character, but are still, in some crazy way, rooting for him to outrun the prophecy.

2. But hands-down, my favorite player in this production was Eric Hissom, who was a four role tour de force: Weird Sister, Porter, Doctor, and Murderer. To each he respectively brought the otherworldy terrifying, rough humor, shocked sense of horror, and banal brutality. Impressive as hell performances.


In summary: hot damn. Teller and Aaron Posner have ruined Shakespeare for me. If every performance of Billy Shakes' plays I see henceforth is not at least as good as this one, I shall be a sad panda.

Tags: 240 dollars worth of puddin', mumbo jumbo, reference, underkoffler's overviews