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Friday, October 15, 2004
At Ga. Shakes: The Scottish Play
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW: “”Macbeth.” Through Oct. 31.
Sexy and slit-throated, the new production of “Macbeth� at the Georgia Shakespeare Festival comes dressed as a Halloween kill-a-thon that, ultimately, is far more passionate than moving.
Director Drew Facher takes Shakespeare’s shortest play, with its dagger-sharp plot about a tormented war hero slashing his way to the throne, and delivers a matinee-worthy thriller that revels in disembodied heads, freeze-action swordfights and Gollumlike witches. The blood bank works overtime, too. In an uncomfortable twist of timing, we get enough grisly decapitations to make the horrors of 11th-century Scotland remind us of the present-day war in Iraq.
Where this production falls short is in conveying the inner haunting of the protagonist. As villains go, Macbeth is one of Shakespeare’s most sympathetic, and a monumentally difficult role to master, precisely because the audience identifies with him battling the darkness within.
Ultimately, whether it’s a lack of gravitas by Daniel May in the title role, or the cast’s collective speed-reading of some of the most famous poetry in the canon — everyone should be blessed with the clarity and ease of Chris Kayser’s doomed Duncan — this “Macbeth� registers less than the drama’s full freight.
Then again, it looks terrific.
With the muscular and tattooed May, we get a Macbeth whose kilt is splattered with the grungy chic of “Braveheart�; at first, he seems almost too young to play the ascendant Thane of Cawdor, until you realize that “old age� arrived much earlier in those days. His youthful virility is a good match for the willful sexuality of Marnie Penning as Lady Macbeth, who skirts the maternal shading often found in this character, giving us more of a hot-to-trot schemer in pursuit of the crown.
Still, in the spirit of the spookhouse season, the “Scottish Play� — so nicknamed because “Macbeth� was said to be cursed — has moments of chilling fun. You can’t help but note the cinematic influences in the overall design, especially when it comes to the superbly strange three witches, the “weird sisters� who foretell Macbeth’s rise to the throne. Two of them
(Sherman Fracher and AlisonCQ Hastings) look like refugees from J.R.R. Tolkien’s Mordor. The third (the delightfully detached Bruce Evers) is a cross between Uncle Fester and Marlon Brando’s Colonel Kurtz in “Apocalypse, Now.�
The horror.
On a technical level, the production has some wonderful otherworldly touches. Kat Conley’s foreboding cubistic set skillfully suggests the play’s empty, godless arena, while offering distant outlines of a castle forever lost in the fog banks. Also noteworthy is MitaCQ Beach’s sound design, full of throbbing percussion and curious industrial noise: You half expect Blue Man Group to show up on the battlements at any minute.
Timewise, as befits Shakespeare’s most concise and violent play, this “Macbeth� flies (two hours, 20 minutes including intermission). Yet despite all the sound and fury, it doesn’t soar.
THE VERDICT: Dressed to thrill, but this “Macbeth� doesn’t kill.
8 p.m. Wednesday-Saturday; 2 p.m. Oct. 24 and 31. $10-$35. Through Oct. 31. Georgia Shakespeare Festival, Conant Performing Arts Center at Oglethorpe University. 4484 Peachtree Road N.E., Atlanta. 404-264-0020. www.gashakespeare.org.
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‘Spooky Puppet…The Beginning’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW: “Spooky Puppet . . .the Beginning.” Through Oct. 30. Horror always resides in a spooky house on a hill, and babes lost in the woods never run away from danger. They leap voluntarily into the vortex every time.
It’s from these tired-and-true camp formulas that the Center for Puppetry Arts’ “Spooky Puppet . . . the Beginning� now rears its ugly head.
In director-writer Clint Thornton’s purported prequel to Lucky Yates’ “Spooky Puppet Horror Show,� an impossibly tall, white-gowned drag-queen thing known as Fang traps a virgin and her goofus fiancé in a ghoulish puppet motel for an orgy of evil.
“A hundred puppets and a blood-red moon!� shrieks Fang as she introduces her circus of freaks and monsters. (Be forewarned, the raunchy romp is intended for ages 18 and up only.)
While Yates’ cult favorite was a chance for his randy creation Fiend to don a smoking jacket and tap a keg of silly sexual shenanigans, here Thornton attempts to describe the events leading up to the birth of Fiend and sidekick She-Devil.
Unfortunately, Thornton’s tale of Rod and Rosie and their inevitable brush with Fang is a fumble. The show is neither particularly scary nor funny, and the injection of an intermission makes the 80-minute evening feel longer than it should.
The veiled nature of puppetry would seem to be a perfect conduit for sophisticated suspense. After all, you get more goose bumps by suggesting evil than you do by screaming bloody murder.
But once we see where the tale of Rosie (Kathleen Link) and the aptly named Rod (Ed Link) is headed, our imagination doesn’t have far to travel, and Thornton’s low comedy offers uninspired writing and too few surprises. References to “Hello, Dolly!� and “The Sound of Music�? Come on.
That said, Bryan Mercer’s performance as the sick and manipulative Fang is perversely delightful, and Kathleen McManus’ nymphomaniacal Lips — nothing more than an enormous pair of red smackers on a pair of sticks — is a hoot. Instead of doing Peggy Lee’s torchy “Fever,� she sings “Fever Blister.�
Then there’s Fang’s “phantom Dick� (Adam Fristoe), who gets to rivet Rosie in a dental chair, while anesthetized Rod is kept under the knife (as it were). Along the way, a doll is blended into a shake, and a trio of swinging objects (the Evil Axes) does a surreal conceptualist ballet.
Maybe “Spooky Puppet� would work better if it mixed a bit more woo-hoo with things that go boo. Toward that end, the center is offering half-price student tickets on Wednesdays, free beer on Thursdays, and costume contests and live music on Saturdays.
Hopefully that will amp up the spooks and the spirits.
Otherwise (and we never thought we’d say this): Come back, Lucky. Come back.
THE VERDICT: Boo.
8 p.m. Wednesdays-Fridays; 8 and 11 p.m. Saturdays. Through Oct. 30. $16-$20. Center for Puppetry Arts, 1404 Spring St. N.W., Atlanta. 404-873-3089, 404-873-3391, www.puppet.org.
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David Robertson conducts ASO
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
CONCERT REVIEW
Atlanta Symphony Orchestra
8 tonight and 8 p.m. Saturday. Symphony Hall, 1280 Peachtree St. N.E. 404-733-5000, www.atlantasymphony.org.
Conductors, those fabulously well-paid jet-setters of the music business, play an intercontinental game of musical chairs.
This weekend, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra's artistic leaders, Robert Spano and Donald Runnicles, are in San Francisco conducting that city's orchestra and opera, respectively. On the ASO podium Thursday evening was the St. Louis Symphony's music director-designate, David Robertson, who built his reputation largely in France. Recently the New York Philharmonic tapped him as a favored guest conductor, an accolade that's sure to raise his national visibility.
With the ASO, Robertson’s substantial talents were evident. He made Tchaikovsky’s ‘‘Capriccio Italien,” which closed the concert, sound like a masterpiece. It’s not, and there’s the brilliance.
For the opening, he forged the brass and percussion into a giant sword of glinting steel, then seemed to swing it around over his head. (Such panache! Such control! I laughed aloud in delight.)
The work is a postcard of the composer’s travels, including a folk dance in three, a dark and noble lament, a spinning merry-go-round and a Roman Carnival. Throughout, Robertson laid out the vertical and horizontal lines of the score — the harmony and melody — with equal zeal. Thus enlivened and supported, the music exploded off the stage. Rarely does the ASO play with such concentrated power, seemingly with more in reserve. It’s proof again that top-tier guest conductors are essential to the orchestra’s growth.
The evening opened with music by the invincible Stravinsky, his complete ballet score to ‘‘The Fairy’s Kiss.”— inspired loosely by music by Tchaikovsky, after Hans Christian Andersen’s grim fairy tale “The Snow Maiden.”
But here orchestra and conductor weren't yet of like mind — perhaps didn't realize what they could achieve together. Although there wasn't much color painted on Stravinsky's neo-classical soundscape, there was some lavish playing and moments that contrasted a hard-edge sound with extreme tenderness.
At core, Robertson’s strength comes from a strong feeling for rhythm and tempo, which he translates into a good sense of musical architecture. He has a frisky, nerdish look, and for the ballet he seemed like a marionette on a string, flopping his arms or jerking his head, using his whole body to get his message across.
His communication skills are also helped by the fact that he at times conducts just ahead of the beat. He’s not moving his baton with the notes, he’s anticipating them, shaping each phrase like a potter at the wheel. It allows him to make spontaneous, if subtle, intrepretive decisions, as a sort of real-time feedback loop between the score, the players and the audience. I’d like to hear him again in weightier repertoire, maybe a Boulez-Mahler program? Bring him back soon.
Between the Russians came Grieg’s chocolate-cake-and-ice-cream Piano Concerto. Robertson’s soloist was his wife, Orli Shaham (sister of celebrated violinist Gil Shaham).
As a pianist, Shaham is not of the look-at-me supervirtuoso school. The delicate lace figures in the adagio movement, calm and soft-spoken, were her best moments.
Did husband and wife have special onstage chemistry, like Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor in the movies? I’d answer that conductor and pianist knew each other’s interpretation well and, as sensitive artists, made music in a unified spirit.
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