May 3–10, 2001

theater

Mad Mac

Macbeth

Hunger Theatre at Walnut Studio Five, 9th & Walnut Sts., through May 20, 215-545-3436

You’ve got your sound. You’ve got your fury. And talk about signifying nothing….

Shakespeare’s study of the terrible price of ambition is ironically and unintentionally parodied in Hunger Theatre’s production. This little company, often impressive with contemporary American work, has overreached their capabilities in undertaking such an ambitious project as Macbeth, and as a result, they deliver something on the level of community theater.

You know how English speakers sometimes assume that if they speak loudly enough non-English speakers will understand them? That seems to be the m.o. here: if you don’t actually understand what the lines you’re speaking mean, shout them. This is Tom Bazar’s technique; he seems to have decided Macbeth was merely a thug ("Gimme wine") and lumbers around in a long black leather coat grabbing people’s faces in two hands. Most of the actors not only cannot speak the Shakespearean language (the weirdo accents sound like Saturday Night Live does Merchant-Ivory), but they don’t seem to know what the lines mean, since they frequently follow line-lengths in their delivery rather than the syntactical sense. Alternatively, they resort to uptalk? in the middle of a speech. The result is that if you don’t know the plot already you’re never going to figure out what’s happening or why or to whom.

This is echoed in the language: characters walk into the king’s presence without acknowledging him, much less bowing or bending a knee. A character says, "Let me enfold thee" and there’s no hug, as though there’s no sense of what’s been said.

All this is made worse by director Craig Eisendrath’s decision to double and triple roles; thus, a character dies and reappears a minute later as somebody else, undistinguishable by either costume or voice. Not to mention the strange giant puppet heads with plastic hair representing Evil but looking like Mardi Gras. And let’s not even try to figure out what’s what with the three witches in matted black wigs, looking like porno wannabes ("withered"???) who took one modern dance class too few. The only redeeming moments come from two actors: Cyndi Janzen is a credible Lady Macbeth, and Eric Pedersen’s mellow voice lends presence to King Duncan and several other roles.

One of the inherent difficulties in Studio Five is that the sightlines are terrible; why then would a director choose to have so much of the action take place close to the floor where nobody except people in the first row can see it? And talk about annoying — check out the musical underscoring. On the other hand, don’t.

—Toby Zinman