'Macbeth' in the park

Free Shakespeare is a noble idea and I admire Revolution Shakespeare's commitment to making its 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 its Macbeth as I applaud its mission.

Outdoor shows face inevitable problems made worse by a company working on a shoestring (unlike, say, New York's Shakespeare in the Park). Here, at 12th and Catharine, we suffer not only through lighting so makeshift that spotlights are sometimes in the audience's eyes or the actors are sometimes standing in the dark; there also are noisy buses, helicopters, 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, with the effect of erasing sense as well as subtlety. Mostly, all the actors say 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.

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 is hardly the "fiend-like queen" of a "butcher husband." There is no perceivable chemistry between her and Delaney, 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.

 Presented by Revolution Shakespeare through Sunday at Hawthorne Park, 12th and Catherine Sts. Free. Information: www.revolutionshakespeare.

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