It's the Witches' world. Macbeth just lives in it.
That's the only sensible conclusion to be drawn from Jack O'Brien's dark and dismal new production of 'Macbeth,' which opened on Thursday night at the Vivian Beaumont Theater, starring Malcolm Gets, John Glover and Byron Jennings as the Witches. (The production also features a lost soul named Ethan Hawke in the title role, but let's not distract ourselves from the main event.)
And you thought this briskest of Shakespeare's tragedies (well, usually it is) was about 'vaulting ambition which o'erleaps itself' and all that other poetic psychological stuff. Nope. As interpreted in this Lincoln Center Theater production, 'Macbeth' is the story of three Weird - seriously weird - Sisters, as the Witches are fondly known, who get their kicks moving around and tearing up human beings like nasty little girls who decapitate their paper dolls.
The witches are themselves in thrall to an evil mistress, Hecate, the queen of night. She has been given a greatly expanded role here (with a speech that may have been interpolated by Shakespeare's contemporary Thomas Middleton) and is portrayed by Francesca Faridany in demented Lady Gaga glad rags. But it's her minions' progress that gives this show its through line.
Played with down-and-dirty glee, and more than a touch of camp by Messrs. Gets, Glover and Jennings, the witches show up in different guises to propel the doom of a certain bewildered Scotsman. Their incarnations include a wounded soldier, a drunken porter (Mr. Glover, who sports sagging breasts) and various lords of the court.
If you are otherwise bored, you can always divert yourself by playing a sort of satanic 'Where's Waldo?' game as you try to spot the Witches in their latest human camouflage. Lest you have any doubts about what shapes fate here, the very stage has been rendered (by the designer Scott Pask) as a big black mandala, a Kaballah-inspired talisman from the late Middle Ages. Destiny, as well as spiritual hierarchy, is etched in its boards.
Within this forbidding context, individual motivation doesn't count for much, which means character takes a back seat to mystical symmetry. That atmosphere is summoned in a glamorous style that crosses the sensibilities of German Expressionism and the 'Hellraiser' horror movies by a team that includes Japhy Weideman (lighting), Mark Bennett (music and sound), Catherine Zuber (who did the era-melding costumes) and Jeff Sugg (projections).
If any of the characters were asked to answer for their bloody deeds, they would have an all-purpose response: 'The Witches made me do it.' Under the circumstances, this ready-made explanation is a godsend, or a devilsend, since few of the performers - including Daniel Sunjata as a vigorous Macduff, Brian d'Arcy James as a hearty Banquo and Anne-Marie Duff as a walking fashion photo op of a Lady Macbeth - give you a clue as to why their characters act as they do.
Though best known as a movie star, Mr. Hawke has demonstrated his stage-worthiness in shows that include David Rabe's 'Hurlyburly' (which, O his prophetic soul, has a 'Macbeth'-citing title!) and two epics for Mr. O'Brien at Lincoln Center, 'The Coast of Utopia' and 'Henry IV.' His Macbeth, alas, is swallowed up by the prevailing shadows and spectacle.
Mr. Hawke, in turn, swallows many of his lines. His is a mumblecore Macbeth, an heir to the petulant Hamlet he played on screen 13 (ooh, 13) years ago. He delivers Shakespeare's poetry like a moody, glue-sniffing teenager reciting Leonard Cohen lyrics to himself.
He exudes a matching adolescent snarkiness, giving a sarcastic spin to his words. Considering his imminent murder of Duncan (Richard Easton) and the compunction that might stay his hand, he snarls at the idea of pity stepping in 'like a naked newborn babe.'
A charitable interpretation might be Macbeth already knows the game is fixed, and any suggestion it might be otherwise has to be sneered at. But, hooded in impenetrable sullenness, he never gives us entry to an interior life with which we might identify.
Such opacity makes playing Mrs. Macbeth hard sledding. (When she tells him his face is like 'an open book,' you have to stifle a guffaw.) And I feel bad that this should be the Broadway debut for Ms. Duff, a wonderful London stage actress whose credits include a very exciting Saint Joan (per Shaw).
Here, she appears to have translated her latest London star turn as the neurotic heroine of O'Neill's 'Strange Interlude,' into iambic pentameter. Her Lady Macbeth is as high strung as an overbred whippet. She has a whippet's lean frame, too, and looks smashing in the strapless black evening gowns she favors as casual at-home wear.
Come to think of it, the entire production looks so darn chic that pretty much any scene could be frozen and slid into the glossy well of Vogue magazine. (How about that banquet table, huh?) The predominant color scheme is black, white and blood red, the shade of a first-act centerpiece of flowers that magically shed their petals when events turn nasty. Macbeth models a gorgeous red bathrobe for the morning after Duncan's murder, which he exchanges for gold and silver raiment once he becomes king.
But no matter the attire, all foolish mortals here are so obviously doomed to be devoured by infernal darkness that you wonder why they bother getting up in the morning. This 'Macbeth' could be regarded as a sort of evil twin to Julie Taymor's more appropriately spectacle-driven 'Midsummer Night's Dream,' in which otherworldly forces manipulate worldly pawns.
I might have had more patience for this novelty at another time. But the triumphantly straightforward Shakespeare's Globe productions of 'Twelfth Night' and 'Richard III' now on Broadway, which trust so completely in the original words, make this 'Macbeth' seem ponderous and gaudy. In a New York theater season that often feels like a wall-to-wall Shakespeare party, the Thane of Cawdor looks embarrassingly overdressed.
Macbeth
By William Shakespeare; directed by Jack O'Brien; sets by Scott Pask; costumes by Catherine Zuber; lighting by Japhy Weideman; music and sound by Mark Bennett; projections by Jeff Sugg; hair and wig design by David Brian Brown; Makeup by Angelina Avallone; stage manager, Tripp Phillips; fight director, Steve Rankin; production manager, Jeff Hamlin; general manager, Jessica Niebanck, presented by Lincoln Center Theater; André Bishop, artistic director; Adam Siegel, managing director; Hattie K. Jutagir executive director of development and planning. At the Vivian Beaumont Theater, 150 West 65th Street, Lincoln Center, 212-239-6200, telecharge.com, lct.org. Through Jan. 12. Running time: 2 hours and 45 minutes.
WITH: Bianca Amato (Lady Macduff), John Patrick Doherty (Cathness), Anne-Marie Duff (Lady Macbeth), Austin Durant (Murderer 2/Siward), Richard Easton (Duncan), Francesca Faridany (Hecate), Stephanie Fieger (Harpier), Malcolm Gets (Witch/Angus), John Glover (Witch/a Porter/Murderer 3), Ethan Hawke (Macbeth), Ben Horner (Murderer 1), Ruy Iskandar (Donalbain), Brian d'Arcy James (Banquo), Byron Jennings (Witch /Bloody Sergeant/A Lord), Paul Kite (Paddock), Aaron Krohn (Rosse), Jeremiah Maestas (Seyton), Christopher McHale (an Old Man/Messenger/an English Doctor), Jonny Orsini (Malcolm), Sam Poon (Macduff Boy), Triney Sandoval (Menteth), Nathan Stark (Fleance), Daniel Sunjata (Macduff), Patrick Vaill (Graymalkin), Tyler Lansing Weaks (Young Siward), Derek Wilson (Lennox).
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