Fontaine Syer has put together a spare and searing production of William Shakespeare’s great tragedy Macbeth for the St. Louis Black Repertory Company, which opened Friday. It wastes no time in getting to the heart of the matter. It’s a bloody heart.
Ambition, achievement, arrogance, crime, paranoia, bloodlust and finally madness mark the thematic trajectory of Macbeth. Four hundred years of telling and re-telling, of political and cultural reorganizing and re-tooling, have not altered the basic arc of the narrative.
Noble Macbeth, a Scottish lord in liege to King Duncan, is visited by three witches who prophesize his coming ascension to power. Macbeth must unravel the prophecy and, at the same time, balance it against the flawed nature of his own personal development.
In other words, Macbeth, like all humans, has a will that allows him to meet difficulties and challenges by choosing. The nature of his choice is what creates his tragedy.
Macbeth’s inner conflict, his personal turmoil, is inseparable from the malevolent political landscape that surrounds him. His weakness is not so much a lack of courage, physical or moral, but an inexplicable wavering at the point of attack. Instead of transcendence, he chooses political maneuver. What would today be backroom manipulation is cold-blooded murder in Macbeth’s world.
Poetic language is at the heart of all Shakespearean drama, and Macbeth is no exception. Although mad and falling toward death in his terrible mental disease, he still has the clarity of mind and human judgment to declare, near the end, “I have lived long enough.”
There has been some mention of problems with the diction of the actors in this difficult play, but I found the expression of the language by the Black Rep players strong, direct and understandable in almost every instance.
The spare and elegant direction of Syer is beautifully expressed in the fully realized Macbeth of David Alan Anderson. He stalks the stage as an admirable commander of men and alternately beats down both himself and his associates as the terrible brute who eventually confronts us.
Elizabeth Van Dyke simply shines as Lady Macbeth. Her manipulation of her husband is never presented as the genuine concern of an ambitious wife for a wavering husband and, then, the demented support of one mad being for another.
As the song says, “there’s a thin line between love and hate.” This certainly applies here, as the same thin line that separates love from madness. Of course, when everybody’s crazy, the most heinous crime seems like business as usual.
Ron Himes, founder and producing director of the Black Rep, has brought us as fine a production of Shakespeare as has been seen in these parts in a while. His own strength and experience as a performer (I hesitate to call him only an actor) completes the cast as he takes on the difficult role of Banquo.
This role calls for a developed character who is both settled spiritually and morally. Banquo’s hand is dipped in tragedy only in so far as his goodness is overwhelmed by the evident madness that surrounds him. Himes gives the role a relaxed depth that balances the intensity of the other important players.
Kudos in particular to Eddie Webb as a vigorous and reflective MacDuff, J. Samuel Davis as a refined and incredibly likable Ross, and Richon May for her round and beautiful Lady MacDuff.
The implied North African setting of Darfur, in modern Sudan, seemed the least successful of the play’s devices. Although the costuming was striking to the eye and the use of the drum as a call to attention and arms made theatrical sense, the Darfurian reference was, to me, a bit of a distraction, or perhaps even a throwaway idea.
If a reference to contemporary violence is needed, a more fitting setting would be Washington D.C. That’s where the deepest levels of violence are now being generated.
How about Bhopal, inner-city lead poisoning, drilling in the Arctic, the end of Social Security as we know it, the rollback of billions of dollars to help the most vulnerable Americans, the end of foreign aid, the refusal to intervene in international crises, arms dealing to anybody who can pay, and, last but not least, the relentless political attacks on the United Nations? Darfur can’t touch that!
Macbeth plays at the Grandel Theater 8 p.m. Thursday to Saturday and 3 p.m. Saturday and Sunday through April 10. Call 534-3810.
