This show was of a much higher caliber in terms of performance values, and the actors were better in that a couple of them knew how to make it look like they understood their lines. Macbeth. Banquo was pretty good. Macbeth rushed all of his lines and got all of his stresses on the wrong syllable- I found myself counting when he talked. What does that mean? He didn't do the work. An actor in Shakespeare who doesn't do the work pisses me off. A director in Shakespeare who doesn't force an actor to do the work pisses me off more.
The other, greater, trouble with it was that they didn't go to any trouble to pick an emphasis for the story, they just crapped out the script. It wasn't a show *about* anything, so it couldn't craft its moments and create any kind of arc. It's admittedly the kind of Shakespeare I aspired to even in college, because it was the kind that I was comfortable being in- phoney prancing around in crowns and capes and loving the sound of my own voice acting. Since I don't really want to be in a dead play anymore, I do much better. These days, I want to make Shakespeare live.
Macbeth is a play about power and magic. That's it. The whole show is how those two elements bring about, well, Malcolm's rule. Shakespeare's plays are totally about realism, ESPECIALLY the ones with magic in them- Hamlet, Macbeth, Tempest, all of them kind of have this universal message that fucking around with the supernatural is a BAD idea. Midsummer both does and doesn't, because it's a comedy. So you have this guy who goes from a soldier to believing he's fucking invincible because these witches keep telling him so, and the whole climax of the show is, "Oh really, ubermensch? Did you know I'm your nemesis?" Stab, slice, Hail King of Scotland. That's the show; if every single aspect isn't working towards that reversal, the play is doing it wrong.
Guess what this play did wrong?
Lady Macbeth has an opening monologue where she goes on and on about how, basically, she wishes she wasn't a woman, because she wants to do man stuff- Beatrice says the same thing, Portia dresses in men's clothes- all the heroines of Shakespeare that women want to be are this way, they want to be dudes so they can actually participate in stuff. You could make a Titania that would be badass, but she'd have to be kind of in to bestiality, or Bottom would have to be played for fewer laughs, and I'm not sure how that would go over.
Anyway, Lady Maccers. So, she literally uses the phrase "UNSEX ME," and then in the very next scene, then they blocked her to seduce Macbeth and be pissed off when he doesn't actually want to sex her because he's busy with other stuff. Um. No. There's no subtext to support that. At all. Lady Macbeth gets what Lady Macbeth wants, and she gets EXACTLY what she wants. That's why she fucking dies. It's OK, you can do that if you want to. This is Shakespeare, his copyright has ceased and that's the only reason to perform him, to bully the script into telling the story YOU want to tell, but you have to cut the lines that say the opposite of the point you're trying to make.
And I know the whole show was a vanity project for Macbeth, which just makes his total ineffectiveness in the role sad. I've seen him do good work elsewhere, but this guy simply stood and said lines and let the play happen around him. I'd much rather put him in Much Ado and let him play Benedick- he's a comedic actor.
I don't know how to fix this production. Sometimes I see shows and go, "this was right, this was right, and if you'd just done this, it would have been good." This one... you'd have to change the tenor of the show to something else to make it work, you couldn't leave any aspect of it and turn it into anything but a more uneven performance.
I don't know how to fix this production. Sometimes I see shows and go, "this was right, this was right, and if you'd just done this, it would have been good." This one... you'd have to change the tenor of the show to something else to make it work, you couldn't leave any aspect of it and turn it into anything but a more uneven performance.
But, this plainly pointed out that Shakespeare has terrible 4th acts. Act 4 of Hamlet is the "Where did you hide the body, Hamlet?" act. Act 4 of Romeo & Juliet is Juliet having to deal with her fiance and her parents before she kills herself- most people cut most of it. Act 4 of Midsummer is "Where the hell is Bottom?" All of them deal with the exploits of minor characters in relation to the main characters- 90% of which could be covered (and often is) in two lines at the beginning of the 5th act, or boiled down to one scene. Was the bear baiting held between acts 3 and 4 and the audience wasn't paying any damn attention anyway? Or was it so that the main character can have a drink and learn their lines for the finale? Were they masking some kind of giant scene change?
Shakespeare analysis done by English majors never, ever anticipates this crap. They want to go on about language, and, no. It's not done for language, it's done because you know what your company can do, and what they can't do, and so you play to those strengths and hide the weaknesses.
I just came home and re-watched the last episode from the 2nd series of Slings and Arrows, which is a way more fun Macbeth.
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