Angela L. Das

In high school, being a self-proclaimed progressive and
serious drama student, I was in an Artaudian production of
Macbeth. The director, on facing the difficult decision of who
to cast as whom using a class of 12 egomaniacal teenage
females, cast all of us as witches, and all of us employed the
Theatre of Cruelty style to “enact” the story of Macbeth: A
complicated theory, not easily grasped by our audiences at the
time, and even more difficult still to explain ten years on.
Last Saturday, I returned to the play and learned how it
really should be done.

It takes great cahones to play Macbeth: to begin a
Shakespearean play as the title character, strong and noble
and to end a blithering, blundering fool, slain and head
mounted on a spike. Andrew H. Leman did wonderfully. His
intonations were expressive, varied and he was majestically
complimented by McKerrin Kelly as Lady Macbeth. In her interpretation
of the role it became clear to me for the first time how brimmed
with sexual persuasiveness her character has been written with.
The words of Lady Macbeth have always seemed convincing enough,
but in Kelly’s delivery, i grasped how manipulative she could be using
her feminine guile.

The special effects were just plain great. For Geoff
Hoff at the LA Theatre Review, who clearly expected a
multimillion dollar production and who says of the three
apparitions, “One looked like nothing but an aborted fetus”,
that’s what is was meant to be, dude. The set designers truly
maximized the space, using good lighting techniques which
illuminated the face of kings behind the Stonehenge-like
pillars when I least expected a new use of the stage space to occur.

It never hurts to read a play before going to see it, but in
case your Shakespeare is rusty, Theatre Banshee has cleverly
anticipated needing to hold your hand and provided a scene by
scene synopsis at the door. They also took care in the
programs to explain their unusual choices: to use an
Aboriginal didgeridoo during scene changes, to use a set that
resembles Stonehenge. Good work, guys.

I wish I’d been sitting in the front row. The reasons, for
brevity’s sake, I’ve listed below:

* Because in the opening sword fight breaking though the smoke
machine’s mist, I’d have been right in the thick of it.
* Because then I would have been perfectly positioned to thump
the loud and innappropriate Loud Laugher in the front row who
let out a hearty chuckle at nothing in particular, periodically.
* Because I wouldn’t have had to have been subjected to the
elemental torture of sitting directly under a fan (with wet
hair, since i left the house in a hurry).

Therein lies my strongest criticism of the production, which
for someone as critical as me, is really saying something. The
theatre is small, and has two powerful fans over the heads of
the audience. I understand these are necessary for temperature
regulation, moving the smoke machine mist out of the way, etc.
But hey, I shivered under 3 coats.

I love this play, I loved this production. Go see this play.
You won’t regret it, just sit in the front rows.

Theatre Banshee is located at 3435 W. Magnolia in Burbank, CA
91505 and this play is running until April 26th with performances Fridays
at 8pm, Saturdays at 8pm and Sundays at 2pm.

Ticket prices: $20.00, $15 for Students/Seniors. Goldstar
members can also get discounted tickets.

Reservations can be made online at www.theatrebanshee.org or
by phone on (818) 846-5323.

Tags: angela das, linkedin, Macbeth, Theatre Banshee, trikkimotiv

This entry was posted on Monday, April 13th, 2009 at 12:42 pm and is filed under Theater Reviews. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.