Macbeth
Tygres
Heart Shakespeare Company at the Winningstad Theater, Portland
Center for the Performing Arts,
1111 SW Broadway, 288-8400.
7 pm Wednesdays-Thursdays, 8 pm Fridays-Saturdays,
2 pm Sundays. Closes May 21.
The curse of
the "Scottish play" is well-known among theater people.
Peter Brook long refused to direct Macbeth for fear
of disaster.
Film versions
include Orson Welles' 1948 production and Roman Polanski's
from 1971. The best of all remains Akira Kurosawa's Throne
of Blood, with Toshiro Mifune and the great Isuzu Yamada.
King Macbeth
is buried on the island of Iona off Scotland.
Something interesting has happened at Tygres Heart, and
it may well save the company from its artistic bankruptcy.
The theater's new artistic director, Nancy Doherty, has
unveiled her new production of Macbeth, and though
it has some problems to contend with, it strongly signals
a change in the right direction for the troubled company.
In the last few years, Tygres Heart has fancied itself
a popular, concept theater, specializing in vaudeville dunceries
and the magpie nests of moods and images that are Mr. Jon
Kretzu's stock in trade. In both cases, the words and ideas
of Shakespeare became subordinate to prat shows and empty
spectacle, leaving audiences to wonder whether the word
"concept" had become synonymous with ignorance and lethargy.
Doherty has taken a different tack, bravely returning to
the plays themselves to see if she could articulate them,
rather than if they could serve her whims and agendas. If
her Macbeth is anything to go by, Tygres Heart may
now have someone at the helm who has some vision, as this
is one of the clearest productions of the Scottish play
that this critic has seen. Doherty delves into the text
and has a firm grasp on the work's intentions and meanings,
creating, finally, a world and a mood that is sustained
from lights-up to black.
Doherty's work fills a vacuum left by years of unfocused
administration, poor training and talent bleeds. She's making
bricks without straw, and so a certain patience should temper
criticism. Her production, though crisp and fluid, is marred
by some appalling actors (who shall remain nameless as they
can only inspire cruel profiles). As one audience member
wisely noted, "Doherty has dragged this theater from nonsense
to sense. Now all she needs is to find some passion."
Portland is not known for its wealth of trained and serious
actors, and so Doherty's work will have to include a certain
amount of basic training. But though the talent pool here
often seems stagnant, there are a number of good actors
in town who are trained and tried in Shakespeare but who
have avoided working at Tygres Heart because of its low
standards. If the company is to survive, Doherty must try
to lure these actors back.
Nevertheless, Doherty has found a suitable Macbeth in Kevin
Connell, a good actor who has saved a few past Tygres Heart
productions. Connell clearly maps Macbeth's journey from
sanity to brutality and occasionally surprises with crystalline
readings, such as with the "tomorrow and tomorrow" speech.
Theresa Ambronn's Lady M is seldom convincing, though she
suddenly comes to life in the sleepwalking scene. But most
of her performance is mannered and lacks nuance. Thomas
Owen's Macduff is Connell's one equal on stage, and special
note should be made of young Michael Cassidy's Boy Macduff,
a brief moment of inspiration.
One of Doherty's innovative touches is to make Lady Macbeth
pregnant. This, too, is inspired, as the text is saturated
with references to birth and babies. The pregnancy and its
eventual abortion come close to providing a brilliant metaphor
for her production, but Doherty inexplicably drops it, turning
her intriguing idea into gimmickry. Macbeth is made
of miscarriages of justice and trust, and Lady M's own explosive
miscarriage, which greets the discovery of Duncan's murder,
is a brilliant coup de théâtre, as it
heralds the start of Macbeth's own bloody, stillborn and
barren reign. As the Hand 2 Mouth Theatre's Jean Fogel Zee
reminded us in her short piece Polus, the very word
"king" means child of the nation. Macbeth is Scotland's
deformed abortion.
But Doherty should've pushed on. Have a weakened Lady M,
with continual issues of blood, drag herself toward death:
strangled on a chord like her deadborn child. Have the stage
littered with the blood-soaked rags that she fights the
flow with--the Porter's "napkins," which writer Garry Wills
pointed out are sops for blood in his book Witches
and Jesuits. Have the witches tend her disintegration
with their slaughter pails of bits close by, as the scraps
of failed births are essential for conjuring (as is found
in Middleton, Marston, Marlowe and Macbeth). Doherty
has found a rich vein but has yet to tap it. Still, her
idea is unique and gravid.
Critic Herbert Blau said that "a theater worth the effort
of decent artists cannot be built without vision." If this
Macbeth is indicative of Doherty's work, then Tygres
Heart may, at long last, have a visionary. Now all it needs
are the artists.
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Willamette Week | originally
published April 26,
2000
|
