Review of Macbeth (Of the Oppressed)

Macbeth and Husband Macbeth (Minino and Stallings)

Macbeth (Of the Oppressed) is not your great-great-great grandmother’s Shakespeare. Or is it? A man – Husband Macbeth, played masterfully by David Stallings—speaks those chilling words “Come to my woman's breasts, and take my milk for gall,” and some have expressed dismay about this gender- and other culture-bending choices by Director Tom Slot in this production at the 14^th Street Y. But let’s think back to the history of who the original players were—young and old men playing at being women and everyone else. How revolutionary is that?  Macbeth has survived the test of time because of its universal message, which goes way beyond gender and contemporary politics of any particular time.  This casting is radical, not because it follows a trend, but because it gets to the root of human questions.

Here’s the way the casting looks on paper: Featuring a cast of eight women and eight men. Starring Olev Aleksander as Malcolm, James Edward Becton* as Second Witch, Susan G. Bob* as Queen Duncan, Adam Galloway Brooks as Son, Jennifer Fouché* as First Witch, Taylor Graves as Lady Macduff, Antonio Minino as Macbeth, Elisabeth Preston* as Banquo,  Briana Sakamoto* as Third Witch, Shetal Shah* as Porter, Lavita Shaurice* as Third Witch, Jacob Stafford as Fleance, David Stallings as Husband Macbeth, Jonathan West as Lennox, and Stephanie Willing as Donalbain.

Each of these actors is well trained and committed; they rise to the challenge of performing Shakespeare with especially moving, stand-up performances delivered by Minino, Stallings, and Preston.

Director Tom Slot had a method to what some might view as his madness in these redeveloped roles: “In order for theatre to be truly impactful it needs to hold a mirror to the audience and reflect the times we live in and the shared human condition that unites us all.” His production complements his vision. I left the theatre thinking about the essence of “the tale,” rather than worrying idiotically over the players’ identities.

The production team deserves tremendous credit for realizing this vision.  Fight Choreographer, Chester Poon, capitalized on the individual strengths of the actors—the women were no less savage than the men; Izzy Fields’ costume designs signified roles and status through elegance without any trace of camp. A special recognition should go to Daniel Gallagher who uses the entire room to create (a) shadow play that engulfs the audience in its encroaching terrors long before the classic Burnham wood approach.

When you enter the theater, you know you are in for an evening of doom. Collin Bradley (Line Producer) confronts by an almost heraldic bloodbath on the floor, you face an ominous uniset of simple set of blocks that prove to be equally suited to form the court scenes and the witches’ lair. The depiction of the bloodbath is varied and intriguing. Jacob Subotnick’s sound design ices the harrowing journey. Rachel Denise April (Stage Manager) rises ably to the challenge of managing the mayhem.

So, you could get sidetracked by the questions of casting and plot tweaks here, but you’d be paying attention to lesser issues. A history of The Globe documents that women were not permitted to act on the stage in England until 1660, well after Shakespeare’s time. This is a cast for our time.

Finally, Shakespeare’s language and the performance of it transcends that narrow focus, sending up political correctness even as it tries to assert new possibilities for all genders. 

If you watch and listen, you will see and hear an extraordinary Macbeth. The lesson here is that the passions transcend individual human concerns; they are universal. With non-traditional casting, comes the equal opportunity right to suffer…jealousy, hate, rage, greed, lust, power, love, and, the mostly absent, joy of life belong to all of us.  See Macbeth (of the Oppressed) to appreciate the language, the acting, and, most importantly the contemporary message about the human condition. If “life is a tale told by an idiot,” I’d choose this company to explain it to me, signifying everything.

MACBETH (OF THE OPPRESSED) will play a three-week limited engagement at The Theater at the 14th Street Y (344 East 14th Street at 1st Avenue, Manhattan). Performances begin Thursday, October 8th and continue through Saturday, October 24th. Opening Night is Saturday, October 10th at 8 p.m.

Macbeth tormented by the witches.

Music was Coming out of the Broken Pieces: Orpheus & Eurydice by The Trip Theatre of San Diego

Review of Tom Dugdale’s Orpheus & Eurydice, presented by The Trip Theatre of San Diego at TheatreLab NYC, 357 West 36th Street, 3rd Floor, New York, NY 10018

Viewed: July 18, 2015 

That the principals in this company have some knowledge of their source material—Ovid’s The Metamorphoses--is a given. There was homework. I approached this play with a lot of enthusiasm because I have given a lot of energy to interpreting Ovid in my lifetime. Tom Dugdale's intention is intriguing in this multimedia update of the Orpheus and Eurydice story. The online content and digital media are a snazzy structural update to Ovid's tradition of using letters between lovers. This version of Orpheus & Eurydice draws heavily on sources of 21^st century angst, featuring an online romance, which results in a wedding between two people who don’t really know each other at all. Have things changed all that much since the time of arranged marriages? Ponder that, for starters.

  

In addition, the white box TheatreLab is a terrific venue for digital projection, with the painted brick surfaces adding texture to the dramatic lighting by Maruti Evans Tindall and Karen Janssen’s affecting films. This was a good technical production facilitated by Nick Drashner (Sound), rounded out by effective and delightfully comic costumes by Desiree Hatfield-Buckley. Kudos to the well-credentialed, earnest artists who form The Trip and to TheaterLab for giving them the space to invent.

Let’s talk about the homework first. Eight short films are meant to be viewed by the audience before attending the play. You can see them at this link.

[Video spoiler alert: Parts of two videos are advertisements for tickets for the play, and the last video refers to a December 2014 performance. While time often turns in on itself in the play, I can’t assume the December date was somehow meaningful to the July 2015 performance. I'm not sure how I feel about commodifying the play within the play. But this is not your mother's Ovid.]

In fact if you watch the films ahead of time, you’ll know quite a bit about the first half hour of the play, which reviews a number of them because the bride, of course, is late to her own wedding and the groom needs to reveal his nervousness about the unknown. During the wait, we, the audience, are asked by Orpheus’ best friend, played by The Trip’s co-founder, Joshua Kahan Brody, if we’ve watched the excellent films, but our replies are ignored. The players assume we haven’t. Note to Writer-Director-Orpheus, Tom Dugdale: This gesture made it difficult for me to tell where I was in the theatrical dynamic—a participant? A spectator? A character? My deliberation  took me out of the play for awhile. 

While my confusion about my role may be satisfying to this conception of the story, it adds to some already weighty temporal questions Dugdale raises by having us watch a film of an event that has already occurred, which we will see in the future in the play. Ultimately, however, my confusions did not take away from the excitement of watching this unconventional union unfold. 

We entered a white room decorated with white and yellow balloons. We shared a wedding toast of sparkling water with the actors. Orpheus’ artistic anguish coupled with his uncertainties about the marriage were both well-played in Dugdale’s fluid acting style. It might be interesting for him to try this again without taking on all of those roles in the production. The program notes reveal Dugdale’s anguish of being in and out of the myth, not sure where the entry point is for us in this time period, and some of those experimental entrances and exits are taxing to the energy of his play.

I’ve titled this review by borrowing some words from Eurydice, speaking about a performance by Orpheus, a rock musician, during which the speakers were thrown on the floor. As a tribute to his power, she says, “Music was coming out of the broken pieces.” This is a good description of the uneven, but often fierce and awesome, progress of the play. Some of the parts are beautifully musical.

The strongest lines of the play are given to Eurydice, played potently by Jenni Putney* (* Appeared courtesy of Actors Equity Association.) In a never-spoiled traditional white wedding dress, she gives voice to the feelings of the play. Even when she dies, there is no blood, and she seems to speak from beyond the grave: “Why don’t you see what is possible?”

Three additional characters, at times wedding functionaries, at other times guests or medical technicians, round out the cast. Actor Paul Marino, sometimes called “Paul,” gave a number of distinctive performances, and his concentrated facial expressions often provided a strong emotional track for the action. Joey Odom and Miranda Dainard also rose to the occasion of leading the Dionysian frenzy and passionate lip-synching as needed.

The tragedy of the original story is preserved in a contemporary crisis and denouement, including cigarettes, cars, and CPR. It was my feeling that the final sequences, including CPR and the film, however beautiful, could have been shortened to tighten up the action. The warning for Orpheus—do not look at Eurydice—was ignored. Maybe that was the point—in our intermediated world, do we every really see each other? It might be better to risk a look despite the consequences.