We went to see Macbeth on Saturday night. It was a minimalist, updated version–meaning that there were few props and the actors wore all black suits, black evening dresses, or black jeans and black button downs. There were knives and revolvers as the weapons of choice and it was a children’s theater (meaning the actors were all high-school age). It was the last children’s theater play for a talented young man I remember seeing in the hospital when he was born. He did a great job and, all in all, it was not a bad version.
The minimalist style might have worked better if the floor hadn’t also been black along with the blocks used as beds, chairs, etc. as well as the clothing, although it really popped when Lady Macbeth came out in a blood red nightgown for the ‘out damned spot speech’.
The lines were spoken very quickly. One speech between two of the characters played by girls sounded like the twittering of birds–high pitched voices and really fast Shakespearean dialogue make the words pretty hard to follow.
The only thing that truly, truly bothered me was a scene where Macbeth was holding a revolver and he had his finger on the trigger the whole frickin’ time. This was a fake gun, but in the movies and on television, ‘prop’ guns are real, shootable, firearms. I think that the director should have taken the time to explain firearm safety, no matter what–like Tom Selleck taking an extra to task for mishandling a firearm on set last week. Other than that, not a bad way to spend an evening.
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