Ron Himes and his fellow actors in the St. Louis Black Repertory Company’s new production of Macbeth have been calling the play they are rehearsing “Blackbeth.”
This is not because they are staging an all-black production of Shakespeare’s great, bloody tragedy. The cast for the Black Rep’s Macbeth is, in fact, diverse.
Director Fontaine Syer did uproot the setting from Scotland to give it a Sudanese flavor, and the Black Rep’s production will include distinctly African drumming, but those are not the reasons why the play took on its nickname.
The actors are sidestepping calling the play by its proper name out of respect for a long-standing theatrical tradition that Macbeth is cursed. Very bad things have happened to productions of Macbeth in which the play was mentioned by name backstage.
Chris Anthony, a former Black Rep intern who now works for the Los Angeles Shakespeare Festival, came back home to serve as Syer’s assistant. She is helping the actors feel comfortable with the play’s dense language, but she was also careful to school the cast on the curse.
“Chris came in and did the whole history,” Himes said, “where the curse came from.”
Misfortune started at the beginning, at what is believed to be the play’s first performance in 1606, when the boy actor cast as Lady Macbeth died of a sudden fever. Legend has it that this and a long list of disasters associated with Macbeth are rooted in the magic rituals Shakespeare wrote into the play with its Three Witches, a gesture possibly intended to please King James I, who had published a book called Daemonologie in 1597.
So, is the Black Rep feeling haunted?
“Not yet!” Himes said n and then laughed, a little nervously.
But Himes, the founding director of the Black Rep, is anything but nervous about the production Fontaine Syer is directing for his company, which previews March 16 and 17 and opens March 18.
“We’ll bring some different rhythms and nuances,” Himes said. “The set and costumes will look different from productions people have seen before, and there are really, really strong vocal and percussive elements.”
“The play takes place in Scotland,” Syer said. “I hope people don’t expect kilts. There aren’t any kilts.”
Instead, she and the production’s designer, Marie Anne Shiment, use imagery and motifs from a place in where, she said, “the level of violence in Macbeth exists today” n Sudan.
She has also incorporated drumming, all performed by members of the ensemble, and what she described as “extremes of the human voice,” or “some pretty hair-raising shrieking.”
In other words, even if Shakespeare was something you snoozed to in school, this production should keep you alert.
In addition to Himes (as Banquo), the Macbeth cast features David Alan Anderson and Elizabeth Van Dyke as Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. Black Rep favorites A.C. Smith, Eddie Webb, John Contini and J. Samuel Davis also appear.
Himes said he first thought of producing the play at the Black Rep after seeing Orson Welles’ adaptation, Voodoo Macbeth, which transposed old European witchcraft to the Caribbean and featured an all-black cast.
There is also a South African adaptation and translation of the play in Zulu, titled Umabatha, which Milt Wilkins (one of three individuals who join Monsanto in sponsoring the Black Rep’s Macbeth) once saw at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London.
The first black actor to tackle the role of Macbeth was Ira F. Aldridge, the great African-American Shakespearean, in the 1830s. For many years, the few black actors who performed Shakespeare were relegated to the role of Othello, the Moor, the Bard’s one great African character.
Macbeth, which plays through April 10, will be the first production of Shakespeare on the main stage at the Black Rep, Himes said. Audiences should experience this historic production. After all, who’s afraid of a little 400-year-old curse?
Performances are Thursday through Saturday at 8 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday matinees at 3 p.m. Tickets (from $10-$37.50) are available by calling 534-3810.
Or stop by the Black Rep at 634 N. Grand, 10th floor, on Thursdays and Fridays from noon-2 p.m. or Saturdays from 10 a.m.-noon for half-price tickets for that evening’s performance.
Other specials: Under 30 Thursdays n all tickets half price for patrons age 30 and under with valid I.D.; and Saturday Matinee Special n tickets $10 for children age 17 and under (best available seats).
Macbeth at the Black Rep
By William Shakespeare
Directed by Fontaine Syer
March 16-Apil 10
Noontalk: March 17 at noon
Post-show discussion: March 25, April 8