Review: “Hard Bard” Macbeth by William Shakespeare. Directed by Ken Holmes. Produced by GreenStage. With Ryan Spickard, Amelia Meckler, Aaron Allshouse, Erin Day, Sam Hagen. Now through October 30.
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| Amelia Meckler and Ryan Spickard as The Macbeth’s |
Macbeth is a tough play to pull off. It’s a bloody, nasty, soap opera; a Scottish “Dynasty” on steroids and smack. The lead character alternates between being a wishy washy henpecked yutz and a megalomaniacal despot.His wife is a shrewish bitch who falls apart at the seams when her plans come to fruition. There are witches, who may or may not be REAL witches, and there is enough doom, gloom, murder and madness to supply Anne Rice with a thousand plots. Macbeth is now considered great art, but it’s easy to understand that Shakespeare was a COMMERCIAL playwright who wrote plays to appeal to the masses. He wasn’t aiming for “Great Art” when he wrote Macbeth; he wanted a popcorn movie/tentpole event that would excite the peanut gallery and keep them coming back for more.
GreenStage is best known for their summertime, open air stagings of Shakespearean plays in local parks. Last fall, they ventured indoors for a “Hard Bard” version of the bloody “Titus Andronicus” and amped up the gore and the mayhem. That project achieved enough success to warrant the company to tackle Shakespeare’s OTHER gory play, Macbeth, for this year’s Hard Bard event. It’s obvious from the poster and the tone of their press releases that GreenStage is staging this show in the broadest possible terms. The poster features Macbeth and his missus in contemporary Scottish garb and splattered with a spray of blood. This is not a subtle and stately Old Vic production of a Shakespeare classic; basically the GreenStage team has gone all FanBoy on the Bard and created a comic book/steam punk/tongue in cheek version of the play. It wants to be a night of good, bloody fun with a laugh or two, and a steady stream of severed arms, heads, and dead babies. It desperately wants to be “cool” and comic book hip and relatable to modern audiences. It sometimes succeeds. Mostly it fails.
And, the reason it fails? Because it doesn’t COMMIT to the premise! Parts of this production are silly, gory fun with tongue fully in cheek and actors hamming it up to great effect. And, there’s nothing WRONG with that! I’m guessing that original productions of Macbeth might not have been that much different; I’m firmly convinced, as I pointed out in my opening paragraph, that Macbeth was meant to be a commercial play and the violence and insanity are MEANT to be highlighted. There’s nothing very delicate or arty about Macbeth…it’s all murder, madness and prancing witches. But, the problem with this particular production, is that some of the actors are fully committed to the over the top/ham handed approach, and other actors play it somewhat seriously, and there are even actors who veer between the two. It’s confusing and makes for an uneven night of theater. Either commit to hamming it up, or play it straight but don’t bounce back and forth between the two. Pick a side and stick to it!
I hate to point the finger at anyone when plays don’t work, but I’m gonna do some pointing for this review because directorially, I thought this show was a mess. I don’t think I’ve seen another show directed by Ken Holmes. (I’m going to confess right now that I am NOT a fan of outdoor theater and I have not seen any of GreenStage’s summertime, open air productions. There are many things I enjoy on a sunny, Seattle afternoon…eating, drinking, strolling, sunning, shopping, more drinking…but, sitting on the ground and watching actors in broad daylight prance about and act, is not one of them. But, I digress. As usual.) Mr Holmes has an impressive list of credits; he has been associated with GreenStage for many, many years and I’m sure he has done some powerful work to achieve the success he has had. But, the primary things I disliked about this production of Macbeth were all directorial choices. The basic idea, I like very much, (hammy, bloody Macbeth) but the idea was not thought through or adhered to. There is a lot of annoying distracting business onstage by background characters when the focus should be on the character’s speaking; I’m thinking of some horseplay between the young princes in the first act…they were involved in some ridiculous, irritating slap fighting upstage from the main action of the scene. Amateurish and juvenile. The minor Thanes were presented as a Barbershop Quartet…I thought this was a cute one scene joke; no, the characters were presented as such through the entire play. I started groaning out loud at their every appearance. Siward, the ally of Macduff in the final scenes, is given a walker to use which was cute on his first entrance but quickly become tiresome as the gag was repeated. Mr Holmes has apparently never heard the maxim, about running things into the ground. Some of the gags in Macbeth bored a hole deep enough to plant a 10 foot eucalyptus. Tiresome.
The actors were…all over the place.Some of them GOT that it was a camp production and had a fine time with it. Patrick Bentley has delighted me in other productions and here, despite having a couple of small roles, he was a highlight of the evening achieving just the right mix of tongue in cheek/over acting that made him a pleasure to watch. The Three Witches were in on the fun, too. Meredith Armstrong, Sarah E. Budge and Janet Cole Hamilton were all having a fine time as the rather glamorously depraved trio. I also liked Sam Hagen’s Banqou/Doctor combo; he was channeling a great SCTV mock serious parody of a Shakespearean performance. And, Aaron Allshouse was fine as the Ole King Cole-esque Duncan and the walker enabled Siward.
I don’t think Erin Day got the memo that this was a camp production. In an inexplicable gender bending casting, she plays Macduff and no one seems to have told her that she is supposed to be having fun. Yes, I know, Macduff isn’t exactly a laugh riot of a part with the whole, “revenging the savage murder of my wife and kids” thing but she could have played the POMPOSITY of the character. It’s like a cast member of “Upstairs, Downstairs” wandered over to the set of “Monty Python” but no one bothered to drop a cow on her. Playing a character relatively straight, when surrounded by hams, only draws attention to the fact that you’re DULL when compared to the other characters. I don’t know if it was her choice, or the directors, but it doesn’t work. Macduff has the long scene when he plans his revenge against Macbeth and it was the dullest stretch of the play; a boring “real” theater moment in the middle of the Amazing Comics version of the play. It was a dreadful mistake.
As for Mr and Mrs Macbeth, they were the most confusing of all. Sometimes they were playing the satire and sometimes they were playing it straight and sometimes they seemed to change in the middle of the scene. I alternated between starting to like the performances and then immediately regretting that emotion. Of the two, I preferred Amelia Meckler’s Lady Macbeth. For one, I loved the idea of Lady Mac-Bee being a full figured lady and a lusty one at that. Ms Meckler has a good time channeling the naughty, kinky corseted aspects of the character. Her Lady Macbeth demands, and enjoys a good shag! But, she played the “mad scene” too straight…it was a let down.
I had a lot of problems with Ryan Spickard’s Macbeth. For one thing, he was a little sputtery with his lines the night I saw the show…it happens to all actors, but it’s unfortunate when it’s the leading role. He also seemed to have a hard time grasping the context of this production. He plays it relatively straight at times, then camps it up for a bit, then goes back to attempting to channel Patrick Stewart. Only in the last third of the play does he start to let go the reigns and give it all his hammy gusto as Macbeth sinks deeper into his insanity. He was grandly off the charts by the end of the play, and appeared to be having a good time, but it was a bit too late to make the performance a success.
Finally, we’ll end on a positive note. I very much enjoyed the “Steam Punk” design sense used for sets, props and especially costumes. On a small budget, the designers have come up with some witty and charming designs and Peter Burford, (sets); Laura Garcia, (props); and especially Janessa Jayne Styck’s costumes are to be commended and admired. Also, the fight choreography and gore effects were also well done and added a lot to the atmosphere of the show.
Who’s this for? Gore hounds. Steam Punkers. Fan Boys/Girls. Kinksters. People on a theater budget: this production is FREE, but donations happily excepted.
– Michael Strangeways
