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SFist Reviews: Macbeth at CalShakes
Stacy Ross as Lady Macbeth and Jud Williford as the title character. Photo: Kevin Berne.
Their latest production of Macbeth is no exception, and this is a play that (like 2006's brilliant Merchant of Venice) requires some delicacy around the tone in order to make it feel at all modern. As director Joel Sass says in the program notes, "What should be a psychological horror show can become a campy haunted house pretty quickly if you don't attend to tone." Many might even recall high school productions of the play featuring the spooky chorus of the Wyrd Sisters portrayed as prosthetic-nosed witches, for instance. Not so in Sass's adapation. The three disturbing figures appear in the opening scene dressed as "nuns of an unnamed order," their faces blacked out behind modified fencing masks, their bodies sheathed in white habits with crosses painted on their chests in blood, their voices disembodied over the theater's speakers, and their hands wearing blue rubber gloves. They form the first taste of what is a truly frightening, off-putting, and wholly effective production meant to scare an audience raised on horror films.
Macbeth is a play about murder, guilt, ambition, and deep moral regret. It's a play about the supernatural as much as it is about the chaotic political times in which it was written -- Shakespeare was clearly trying with his story to capitalize on the major tabloid story of the day, the Gunpowder Plot to kill King James I, which was pegged to devilry and witchcraft as much as it was to the Catholics trying to overthrow the government. It's a play about a Scottish king (which James technically was, born to Mary, Queen of Scots), who usurps the throne through murder, and the story of the psychological aftermath and the trail of blood that follows that murder.
Jud Williford does an excellent job of capturing Macbeth in all his harried weakness, as he unravels and sees dead people and generally loses his mind. As Lady Macbeth, Stacy Ross (who recently did a bang-up job in Mrs. Warren's Profession) is vicious, calculated, and everything you want her to be, and she, too, does a marvelous jobs of losing her mind before our eyes by the time the play the ends.
But what sets this production apart, besides the well patina'd, asylum-like set, is the blood and spookiness that director Joel Sass injects into it. He's stripped the cast down to a spare twelve, with most of the actors playing multiple roles in different garb, and he's given us a Macbeth that dives fearlessly into the gore and sensational, horror movie excesses behind the poetry. After Macbeth commits his first murder, the blood get smeared everywhere, and as the bodies pile up, so do the macabre tableaux on the stage.
Especially if you've never seen Macbeth, this is the production to see. Why bother being sort of disturbed, or worse, confused, as you listen to so many soliloquies about death and regret. Why not be viscerally frightened alongside these characters and witness the psychological hell Shakespeare paints right there with them?
The show runs through September 12, so grab some tickets here or call the box office at 510.548.9666. And as always you can picnic in the grove beforehand next to their brand new concession stand and bathroom building, and/or bring your food and wine into the outdoor amphitheater with you. (It's the second exit after the Caldecott Tunnel on 24, or if you want to get drunk, just take BART to Orinda and hop the free shuttle bus which makes the rounds to the BART station every fifteen minutes or so until showtime, and then shuttles you back at the end.)