Theater

MacFrasier comes to the Colonial

by Carolyn Clay

WE'RE LISTENING: does Kelsey Grammer still have the Shakespearean touch?

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow have crept in this petty pace until it is finally time to behold the much-anticipated Thane of Frasier Crane. Meeting the press two days before the Boston opening of Macbeth, in which he plays the title role, television star Kelsey Grammer, wearing a black T-shirt and stubble, cheerfully asked, "Well, what can we do for you?" Then, having deposited his gum in a bit of the New York Times, he proceeded to talk about "the Scottish play," which he intends to put not on a couch but on a train. "My image of the play," he explains, "is that it should be like a freight train." This staging of Shakespeare's shortest play, he adds, "is shorter than two hours. Any air stops the relentless action of this play."

Grammer compared the Colonial Theatre, where Macbeth holds court, to "the palace at Versailles." No such formality, however, marks the production, the style of which Grammer describes as "contemporary, suggesting medieval. It's The Matrix meets medieval times. We use actual swords, and there's killing aplenty. We kill children, anybody." There is, he promises, lots of blood.

Flanking Grammer at the press conference were two of his co-stars: Diane Venora, who plays the ruthless Lady Macbeth, and erstwhile Family Ties star Michael Gross, who plays Ross, one of the Scottish nobles who turn on Macbeth once he starts murdering people left and right like Richard III in a kilt. Venora and Grammer were Juilliard classmates in the 1970s; indeed, Grammer is no stranger to the classical stage, having assayed Shakespeare at the Old Globe Theatre, at the Mark Taper Forum, and on Broadway, where he played Cassio, opposite James Earl Jones and Christopher Plummer, in Othello. He understudied Philip Anglim's Macbeth 20 years ago, when the pre-Frasierite actor was just 25.

Emanuel Azenberg, who is co-producer of Macbeth with SFX Theatrical, put Grammer on to the British director Terry Hands, a former head of England's Royal Shakespeare Company whose more than 50 productions have included a Winter's Tale with Jeremy Irons and a Love's Labour's Lost with Ralph Fiennes. Grammer says of Hands, who helms Macbeth, "He has a very specific approach to the play that corresponds to mine." The result of their collaboration, he predicts, is "an impassioned, focused, hyper-tuned rendering of the play. There's not a lot of fat on it."

As for what Dr. Frasier Crane would make of the increasingly unstable Macbeth, Grammer deadpans, "Well, obviously he has loss issues." There does not seem to be much of the TV psychiatrist's self-importance, though, in the actor's approach to the part. "For me," Grammer explains, "the Method that has been hashed out is never to think of my life as as big as Macbeth's. I like to think my imagination is as big as Macbeth's life. But, frankly, my life is not as interesting as Macbeth."

Macbeth is at the Colonial Theatre through June 4. Tickets are $25 to $68.50. Call (617) 931-2787.