Macbeth, referred to as " the Scottish play " because of the backstage curse associated with uttering its name out loud, needs to run its course quickly, as if the fiery comet of the title character had to burn himself out before doing any more damage. At two and a quarter hours (in Boston Theatre Works’ current incarnation), this shortest of Shakespeare’s tragedies provides little time for distractions that do not drive the action to its bloody finish. And I’d suggest that Macbeth, in addition to being swift, is Shakespeare’s most masculine play, despite the plum role for Lady Macbeth, the poignant cameo for Lady Macduff, and those problematic Weird Sisters.
Given the notion that men are from Mars and women are from Venus, and that Shakespeare was recording the fall of a man whose testosterone was racing into the medical record book, the unisex casting of this production makes little sense. Director Jason Slavick puts both men and women on stage, but some women take men’s roles, men play only male characters, and Shakespeare’s women are obvious women — particularly the witches, who look like a line-up from a Victoria’s Secret catalogue. In the interest of gender equity, not to mention historical accuracy, why not let men play female characters, according to 17th-century practice, and see how that choice informs the play?
It seems that Slavick wants it all ways. He explains Lady Macbeth’s hold on her husband’s ambitions through Macbeth’s sexual enslavement to her, punching up their scenes with a bit of grip and grope. And he makes the witches sex kittens, though they’re dressed like a trio of Isadora Duncan wanna-bes. Yet except for this concept that sex rules the game, the production’s approach is so gender-blind that it permits one of the Weird Sisters, double-cast as the drunken Porter, to mime pissing against a wall. Since the small ensemble of actors plays multiple roles, it’s hardly surprising that there’s often a question about who’s who and on which side. Costume designer Molly Trainer outfits the male characters in vaguely Beowulf-era garb but gives Lady Macbeth cleavage-revealing nightgowns.
Perhaps more problematic is Slavick’s idea that Macbeth is ruled rather than informed by the Weird Sisters’ prophecies; it’s as if they had determined his decisions and he were a mere victim of fate. The trio are on stage continually, either watching, alternating in the smaller roles, or gleefully responding to the effect of their meddling while beating their small drums. If the major lesson of the play is the hideous wages of sin, Slavick has skewed its meaning, allowing Macbeth to cheat responsibility for his actions.
Shawn Galloway, an actor with credits from many of the nation’s Shakespeare festivals, starts out as a lightweight Macbeth, missing his opportunity to illuminate the moment when he transforms from loyal follower to incipient murderer with treason on his mind. Yet he comes to life in the realistically choreographed battle scenes, bellowing out his defiance at all comers. Anne Gottlieb begins as an oversize consort, suggesting she’s a witch in league with the Sisters, then shrinks to a shadow when she descends into madness, barely registering except for the poignancy with which she utters those three famous " oh " s in the sleepwalking scene. Lisa Anne Porter, a veteran of the Los Angeles Women’s Shakespeare Project (in whose productions all the Bard’s roles are played by women), is more effective as Banquo than as the whining Lady Macduff. Constantine Maroulis, as Malcolm, heir to the murdered Duncan’s throne, is a young actor with considerable stage presence in his portrait of the resolute son.
Galloway, Gottlieb, and Porter handle Shakespeare’s language fairly well, except for dropping some lines at heated moments. But the rest of the cast ranges from acceptable to embarrassing in addressing Shakespeare’s poetry. Count this show as a valiant try for Boston Theatre Works but perhaps, like the play among the superstitious, " cursed " from the start.
