Ashland Theater Note: Macbeth

I had thought that I'd never see a really first-class Macbeth, because the play requires two over-the-top performances--Macbeth and his Lady--and you couldn't expect two that strong in the same place: like matter and anti-matter.

I think the current Ashland offering pretty much proves me wrong: Peter Macon as the King and Robin Goodrin Nordli, seen yesterday with a pig-snout on her nose, were just about as powerful and evenly-matched a pair as you could hope for. The result was all you could want in a Macbeth: rapid, scary, pathetic, blood-and-thunder theater dynamic enough to hold any live audience, with enough inner life left over to win forgiveness from an academic. Macon, who turned in a good Othello last summer, seemed even better suited for the role of the King: eager, ambitious, warm-hearted and just gullible enough to think that he could do it. Nordli, who seems to have tackled just about every fat female part in the canon, was mostly his match, although Macon did have a kind of raw energy that would just spill over the rest of the stage whenever he was present.

But Mrs. Buce adds--and I think she is right--that the director did betray Nordli in one important respect: she stepped on Nordli's big speech. That would be the mad scene, the one where Lady Macbeth says "out, damn spot," and "who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him." Nordli started out at the top of a long ramp, her face in shadows; she was followed by three children in black who seemed to be a part of the witches' intern program. By they time you could see her, you realized that she was covered with so much--what, pancake makeup? A mask?--that was supposed to make her look crazy and just made her look like she was on crystal meth. I can't for the life of me understand why they didn't just let Nordli be Nordli and finish her lady's life with all the range and subtlety she had displayed all along.

Besides the leads, there is surprisingly little in Macbeth that you really remember. For a company that likes to hoke it up so much, the witches were surprisingly conventional--at the beginning, almost perfunctory, although they picked up steam later. Josiah Phillips, such a fine Sancho just yesterday, was a bit of a disappointment as the Porter (a matter of some personal concern since this is the only Shakespearean role I still want to play). Rex Young as Banquo presented a ghost sufficient to scare the bejeeezus out of us. As to the rest of the young men, I admit I kind of have trouble keepimg them all straight in my mind anyway.

Macbeth may not be the greatest Shakespeare play, but it is the greatest something-or-other. In particular, it is my hands-down pick for the ideal "first play" in high school. I know, teachers always fall for Romeo and Juliet on the mistaken notion that the kids will like it because it is about young love. They forget that it is an old person's view of young people. Not to mention that dialog in Romeo in Juliet is some of the most stylized and in the canon. Meanwhile Macbeth is all murder, madness and betrayal and what's not to love about that?