Theatre in Review: Macbeth (an undoing) (Theatre for a New Audience)

	Nicole Cooper, Adam Best. Photo: Gerry Goodstein

This new take on the Scottish Play began with a commonplace insight: The writer and director Zinnie Harris has noticed that in Shakespeare's tragedy, Lady Macbeth, who comes on strong in the early scenes, plotting the assassination of Duncan, the king, with relish, vanishes from the plot, re-emerging much later in her famous sleepwalking scene, riddled with remorse. To be sure, it feels like a significant gap: Where has she been? How to explain her apparent change of heart? Strangely, Macbeth (an undoing), takes its own sweet time arriving at an answer. And when it does, it stammers, struggling to explain itself.

For the first half of the new production at Theatre for a New Audience, one might call Harris' drama Macbeth (a rewind). It's different from Shakespeare's text, but not nearly enough. Its main point of invention is a reimagined relationship between Lady Macbeth and Lady Macduff; here portrayed as cousins and frenemies. Lady Macduff, who is appalled at the speed with which the Macbeths come to power, is a vivacious and maritally neglected chatelaine, carrying on an adulterous affair with Banquo. She is also heavily pregnant; when she finally delivers a son, Lady Macbeth acidly notes, "He looks like Banquo, I wager." "He looks like a baby," replies Lady Macduff, cagily, an evasion that amounts to a confession.

There are other gripping and/or amusing touches: Carlin, a lusty, plainspoken narrator who takes on various roles (the abundantly gifted Liz Kettle), takes one look at the skeletal metal structure of Tom Piper's set and sniffs, "Bit of the highlands painted on a cloth behind might have been nice. Dab of heather, wee bit of gorse." Malcolm, played by the actress Star Penders (who gets a laugh with a single sour glance), is a sullen, anxious teenager, a coddled basket case who should be ready for the throne of Scotland in, oh, thirty or forty years. The play is often strongest when indicting inequality between the classes: A servant, bitterly surveying the aftermath of a posh dinner party, notes "bottles half empty, vomit on occasion, meat half-chewed and spat into the corner." There's the glamor of the aristocracy for you.

But Harris' plan doesn't kick into high gear until the second half, which essentially reverses Shakespeare's structure: Macbeth is consigned to a drafty upper room in Cawdor castle while the missus wheels and deals, struggling to hold onto power as her enemies assemble. Indeed, the entire production seems to turn against her: During a meeting with her advisors Malcolm and Ross, both men insist that she is Macbeth, refusing to see her as she is. On the road to dusty death, we are invited to see Lady Macbeth as a victim, a woman of heart and intelligence trapped in a play stacked against her. Why, she wonders, should she be condemned? "For taking the options that a man would? For living in a life and place that was so brutal that power by any other means was impossible?" Well, all right but, given the deadly swath she has so enthusiastically cut through the supporting cast -- you've never seen so many blood-stained costumes -- it's a little hard to sympathize. Ask Banquo -- who, we are told, gets shot up with two dozen bullets.

In any case, Harris deals out her ideas like a deck of cards. Next, Lady Macbeth is upbraided by the three witches (who have been hovering outside the castle, trying to get her attention) for not being sufficiently supportive, one of them commenting, "Perhaps we do meet one more time. In a place where we talk about women helping each other. Of seeing each other as we are." Fair enough, but they are witches, you know, responsible for setting the whole sorry story in motion. Lady Macbeth also has her reasons for shunning them, having previously (and futilely) requested their help with her multiple miscarriages and stillbirths. Her agony over these losses is the play's most touching point ("So I am reduced to my infertility after all") and it goes a long way toward humanizing her; then again, as an argument that uses 21st-century ideas of personhood to criticize the medieval need to produce children for the sheer sake of survival, it is less than persuasive.

As a director, however, Harris has a knack for casting; the production, from the Royal Lyceum Edinburgh, is packed with talent. It's not surprising that the ladies dominate. Even so, Nicole Cooper's Lady Macbeth is marked by a cutting intelligence that often deceives one into thinking that her murderous plans are the height of reason; her growing uncertainty as she loses control of the kingdom is equally compelling, as is her forthright lack of repentance in the face of doom. Dealing with a hybrid text, Cooper easily shuffles between Shakespeare's verse and Harris' contemporary-sounding dialogue. (The action unfolds in a version of the 1950s, although the characters sound very much of today.) She is clearly an actress of formidable range and technique and I hope we see her again soon.

Equally intriguing is Emmanuella Cole as Lady Macduff, a trenchant observer of the treachery swirling around her and an ace poker player when it comes to dealing with her deadly cousin; Cole also pulls off a nifty technical feat, playing both Lady Macduff and her (unseen) son in Shakespeare's famous scene. Kettle's Carlin is an excellent host, keeping a beady eye on the action and greeting us "misery seekers," sardonically adding, "Here they come. Eyes all nasty and randy for gore." Representing the male contingent, Adam Best is a strikingly different Macbeth, offering the weakest and most transparent defense for killing Duncan's guards (whom he has framed as murderers), and, later, tortured with guilt, frantically trying to wash away bloodstains only he can see. James Robinson is a strapping, duplicitous Banquo, a romantic hero mired in intrigue.

Piper's set, which uses a metal superstructure and mirrored panels, allows for instantaneous scene changes; Lizzie Powell's lighting slashes through the darkness with strong diagonal beams, an approach that makes the stage appear to contain unknown depths. (One caveat: Occasionally, the light catches a bit of the reflective scenery, to blinding effect.) Alex Berry's costumes strike a strong period note, whether with military uniforms, meticulously tailored men's suits, or elegant women's evening wear. (Lady Macduff's blood-red traveling coat is a knockout.) Pippa Murphy delivers a panoply of sound effects, including crows, birds in flight, a jazz band, and some impressive thunder, in addition to effectively mournful underscoring by the composer Oguz Kaplangi.

If Macbeth (an undoing) is a near-miss, it is elegantly appointed and filled with people worth knowing. But if Harris had solidly advanced any one of these arguments, she might have produced a more cogent feminist analysis of Shakespeare's most violent tragedy. As it happens, she dawdles before offering a confused and unfocused thesis. Lady Macbeth will need to find a more eloquent attorney for the defense. --David Barbour