Review: MACBETH
By Toby Zinman
For the Inquirer
Free Shakespeare is a noble idea and I admire Revolution Shakespeare's commitment to making their productions available to the public, a public willing to sit on blankets in a dark park on a chilly night.
I wish I could applaud their Macbeth as I applaud their mission.
Outdoor shows face inevitable problems made worse by a company working on a shoestring (unlike, say, Shakespeare in the Park in New York). Here we suffer through not only lighting so makeshift that spotlights are sometimes in the audience's eyes or the actors are sometimes standing in the dark,but there are noisy buses, helicopters, neighborhood kids, barking dogs, and skateboarders.
A more important problem is Hawthorne Park's impossible acoustics: the actors—most of whom conspicuously lack classical training and speak in conspicuously American accents—are forced to shout in strained voices; the effect erases sense as well as subtlety. Mostly, everybody says everything in the same rhythm as loudly as they can, and since we can rarely see their faces, there isn't much acting going on. If you don't know the play before you go, you'll likely feel pretty mystified as to what is happening.
Only Jared Michael Delaney, in the mighty title role, manages to triumph over these adversities and occasionally convey Macbeth's profound weariness and disgust with life and himself. His "Tomorrow and tomorrow" speech is very fine.
The powerful role of Lady Macbeth (Aime Donna Kelly) seems to have shrunk to a minor part; she hardly seems the "fiend-like queen" of a "butcher husband." There is no perceivable chemistry between Delaney and Kelly, so we don't understand their marriage dynamic or her power over him.
There are odd interpretive decisions, too. A New Orleans brass band marches around playing songs like "Bill Bailey," while a voodoo man seems to be the ringleader of the Witches and can, by shaking his rattle stick, make dead bodies rise so that they can exit the stage. Banquo is played by a woman (Corinna Burns) and is disconcertingly referred to as "she."
The entire production, under Allison Heishman's direction, lacks the ferocity and blood-soaked madness of the play.
Revolution Shakespeare at Hawthorne Park, 12th & Catherine Sts. Through Oct. 12. Free. Information: www.revolutionshakespeare.org.