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For a company born of inventive stagings and eyebrow-raising recontextualizations—its Macbeth set to the music of Radiohead, for example, which runs through Feb. 22—Experience Theatre Project’s riskiest move might just be its recent relocation after leaving the Beaverton Masonic Lodge. However nobly quixotic the desire to bring immersive drama to the cultural hinterlands, even the most committed booster must have questioned building out the new locale in back of a feed store hidden behind downmarket mini malls. To paraphrase a song from ETP’s latest, unknowing collaborators, what the hell is this doing here? This doesn’t belong here.
Inside the luxe foyer, though, the appeal of a dedicated space makes a little more sense, and the masterful set design forgives all difficulties of transit. Audiences are split between a thin, lightly elevated rectangular stage imagining a runway show at the Globe and a sumptuously crafted forest of witches, warnings and wintry discontent made glorious summer by the songs of Thom Yorke.
Alisa Stewart, ETP’s founder, says she is a lifelong Radiohead superfan. She attended the band’s acclaimed synthesis of Hamlet with their sixth album, Hail to the Thief, held last summer at Stratford-upon-Avon. Utterly entranced, Stewart walked away determined to infuse her company’s upcoming Macbeth production with the same movement-based energy drawn from an expertly curated playlist. Practicalities demand excising vocals in favor of a live backing band (including Stewart as pianist) that would perform familiar tunes “inspired” by the alt-rock giants.
“We’re not the Royal Shakespeare Company,” she explains. “We just tried to mesh a good song with each scene to convey the right feeling. Our production became very centered on emotions because, to me, that’s what Radiohead is—music just absolutely filled with emotion.”
As should be expected, those scenes best fitting the continuous sonic overlay were either constructed around dramatic action or undercutting narrative movement to spotlight reflective revelations. To wit, the hard-charging “Idioteque” thrillingly amps up a climactic swordfight choreographed to maximum effect by Andrea Parsons while the haunting complexities of “Pyramid Song” further contorted the appearance of Banquo’s ghost. “Hail to the Thief” scores Lady Macbeth’s infamous reversal from immorality to amorality during her “Out, damned spot!” monologue.
Macbeth’s text has become so ingrained in the surrounding popular culture that—much as Stewart wished to avoid any semblance of a jukebox musical—any straight rendering runs the risk of echoing a greatest-hits mixtape of disjointed quotes audiences know by heart. Whereas the more expansive tracks of later albums surely influenced by lead guitarist Jonny Greenwood’s forays into film scoring (Spencer, One Battle After Another) proved to be Macbeth’s most effective, the stirrings of familiar tunes—OK Computer’s “Exit Music (for a Film)” during the royal procession, say—veered awkwardly near A Knight’s Tale’s level of anachronistic hit parade.
As well, not every actor enjoys the same effortless command of Shakespearean English, and ETP’s company seemed particularly prone to divergent interpretations. KJ Snyder plays the titular, regicidal ruler-in-waiting as far younger than his years. Leaning into callow hesitancy increasingly on the verge of a breakdown, Snyder explores a more naturalistic approach that examines anew each word with growing horror, but overtly unstable musings ever threatened to be subsumed by their sonic backdrop. Meanwhile, Taylor Jean Grady’s incandescent Lady Macbeth revels in the thickets of iambic pentameter astride a casual grace and deceptive ease, twirling along the natural rhythms and melodies of the text, which too often runs dissonant to the accompanying soundtrack.
That said, some actors engage their accompaniments so winningly that a cappella arrangements of their monologues would almost certainly disappoint. In a masterful turn as the drunken porter (among several other roles), Ryan Pfeiffer uncorks darkly comedic passages against the beat of “Talk Show Host” with the droll precision of an Elizabethan scat singer. In a similar vein, the trio of witches (Lexy Bolsinger, Marietta Hedges and Katy Payne) chew up the scenery like so many eyes of newt, twisting, cavorting and trolling each line through the wild horns and unending bass in the free-jazz hootenanny of “National Anthem”.
This is hardly Macbeth’s first high-concept staging. Using Radiohead is a gimmick, but clever. Moreover, any company seeding Aloha’s artistic wasteland with experimental theater deserves the benefit of the doubt. Projects so brimming with true passions can’t help but enliven even the most familiar texts. The hoariest of theatrical staples somehow feels not just newly relevant, but genuinely, vividly and compellingly personal.
SEE IT: Macbeth at Experience Theatre Project, 18850 SW Alexander St., Aloha, 503-568-1765, experiencetheatreproject.ludus.com. 7:30 pm Thursday–Saturday and 1 pm Sunday, through Feb. 22. $45–$60, $25 students and seniors, $5 Arts for All patrons.
