One of my favorite scenes in CST's new production of "Macbeth" is one in which Macduff's cousin comes to tell him that his family has been murdered. In the scene, the stage is bare. Macduff and Malcolm (the murdered's king's son who has fled to England) are strategizing when the news comes. The cousin who delivers the news is heavy hearted and sad as is Malcolm in hearing it. Macduff, as you might imagine, is devastated. I've seen this scene done a number of times and mostly seen it played unconvincingly as shock followed by sadness. in those instances, it feels like a scene intended only to deliver a bit of news that the audience needs to know. In this production, I saw moments of sadness that were very convincing. As the same time, even in this one scene, it went in and out of being convincing.
For me, all of "Macbeth" was like this. There were moments when what was happening on stage was unusually well done and authentic and times when actors seemed merely to be speaking their lines in ways that they think they're to be spoken. Karen Aldridge, who continues to wow me as an actor, gave a fantastic performance as Lady Macbeth. In her fist scene, in which Macbeth returns from victory, she is turned on by his new acquisition of power and gives him quite a loving. The connection between power and sexual excitement is established and Lady Macbeth's later taunting of Macbeth for not being a "man" when he shies away from murder for the sake of power makes more sense than I've seen it in most other productions. Or at least brings a different dimension to it. The "out, out, damn spot" scene is sad and scary. In the hands of Aldridge this scene feels fresh, like something I hadn't seen in quite that way before.
Macbeth is far less convincing. The actor, Ben Carlson, has a fine pedigree (having performaed a lot at the famous Shaw festival) and is, I assume, a very good actor. His performance here, however, wasn't careful enough. So much of this play is overwrought with emottion and here played at such a high pitch that there seems to be no nuance in the delivery of lines. Carlson is a steamroller. Macbeth's feelings about what he's doing shifts around constantly, from fear to anger to paranoia to happiness to fear to anger to paranoia, and this is not carefully tracked in Carlson's performence. Macbeth, of course, has the famous soliloguy about sound and fury signifying nothing and Carlson delivers it in a flat staccato that almost gets thre but never does. Smartly, he slows it down but doesn't bring meaning to the lines as convincingly. Compared to the almost equally famous Lady Macbeth's "out, out, damn spot" lines, his delivery was much less convincing.
When the play opened, the stage was a stark grey. I thought that might mean a production in which bells and whistles would give way to a careful treatment of the text. Thirty seconds into the play, though, I realized that wasn't going to be true. The art design is largely grey and black and takes its cue from S&M and seedy club culture. At times, this works very well. As the play opens, though, the voices of the three withches are electronically layered and echoed so that I couldn't understand what they were saying. Later in the show, though, when lady Macbeth is losing her mind she thinks she sees the bodies of Lady Macduff and her children hanging bloody. Light momentarily illuminate the bodies hanging upside down high at the back of the stage for a quick moment and it sends shivers up your spine. The contrast between the start grey and white of the set and this small spot of reds and pinks is effective. There are times when the stage effects of the production detract from the script and times when they enhance it.
All of this is to say that what happens is often exciting but also inconsistent. The direction never brings the elements of the production into a cohesive whole. There is a lot I liked a lot about this production and much that left me flat. The ideas in it work very well at times and there are times when the production has such integrity that I wish more care had been taken. having said all that, I liked it more than most straight productions of "Macbeth" I've ever seen.
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