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Portland's outdoor theater has shriveled in the sun.
It's a good thing you can strip and cycle with thousands of naked Portlanders, or gorge on Potato Champion's poutine while watching Ferris Bueller at Cartopia this weekend. Because you won't be at Trek in the Park. There is the promise of Richard III or the wide-lapeled variety performer Tony Starlight come mid-July, but until then Macbeth at Lone Fir Cemetery is your lone option.
Perhaps it's best that Portland's stagephiles—a polarized group of coifed Portland Center Stage peacocks, blue-haired philanthropists or academics, and pay-what-you-will improv fans—avoid sunburn.
I did witness an SPFed few lounging among the tombstones of Lone Fir on checkered blankets and lawn chairs. They drank pink wine and wove the grass into tiny braids.
If I'd been inside a stuffy, indoor theater, I might have left disgruntled, but the hakuna matata spirit of summer sopped up most of my disappointment in the lengthy two hours of Shakespeare's Scottish tragedy.
Most notably mediocre was Michael Godsey as Macbeth. Godsey is the artistic director of Portland Actors Ensemble, but playing the eponymous—albeit deranged—thane, he acted more like he was at his day job as a Concordia University chemistry professor than like a Shakespearean noble. Mostly, he just seemed uncomfortable onstage. And on opening night, Godsey wasn't the only one who faltered on a few lines.
The female characters saved the play. When Lady Macbeth cried, "Out, out damn spot!" the crowd leaned in to study her soiled hands. The witches were the best—three young actresses at once sultry, weird and frightening. When they danced around a cauldron of fenny snake and frog toes, I wasn't alone in ogling their moving lips and the wide, graceful sweeps of their arms.
But when the witches disappeared, so did my interest in the play. After all, the grass is green and the sun's up late. In the case of Portland's outdoor theater scene, the park—not the play—is the thing.
SEE IT: Macbeth is at Lone Fir Cemetery, Southeast 26th Avenue and Stark Street, 224-9200, portlandactors.com. 7 pm Thursdays-Saturdays through July 25. No performance July 4; 6 pm July 11 at Marylhurst University, 17600 Pacific Highway, Marylhurst. Free (donations encouraged).
WWeek 2015