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Friday, May 6, 2005
Shake at the Lake: For the bloodthirsty
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW: “Macbeth.” Shake at the Lake at Piedmont Park. Through Sunday, May 8.
Shake at the Lake patrons taking their last precious bites of chicken salad and sipping red wine from plastic goblets must have had quite a start as Georgia Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” got under way at Piedmont Park Wednesday night.
Just seconds into the Weird Sisters’ first gory rampage, one witch rips an organ from a victim, and then —- oh no, she’s not really going to do that while we dip into the salsa, is she? Indeed, the hideous creature squeezes her victim’s still-beating heart until the blood drips into the mouth of an unconscious sergeant, who then stands up and foams at the mouth.
G-ross.
Pack up the pimento cheese. “Macbeth” hath murther’d hunger.
But judging from the opening-night crowd, Georgia Shakespeare’s second gig at Piedmont Park has whet the city’s appetite for free, alfresco theater. About 700 turned out to watch the Thane of Cawdor’s demise as the sun went down on a cool spring evening.
Director Drew Fracher’s invasion- of-the-Goths “Macbeth,” with its Marilyn Manson-style man-skirts, hairstyles and tattoos, may not be for purists, but it’s so over the top that it’s downright campy fun.
How can anyone complain when the night air is right for cuddling, the magnolia-bowered amphitheatre beside Lake Clara Meer is framed by a fading ice-blue sky, and the words of our greatest poet are dancing across the ether?
Mirrored in the water, Kat Conley’s architectural set —- a gray matrix of geometric nooks and crannies that recalls a sci-fi castle —- sprouts from the park like a surprise visual arts installation. (It’s worth a look-see this weekend even if you can’t make the show.)
Arriving at 6 a.m. with coffee and a pillow, Midtown resident Victor Tamayo was first in line for tickets. By the 9 p.m. intermission, he was still standing —- and tickled by the performance. “It’s amazing that they are doing things like this in the park,” said Tamayo, a waiter at a downtown restaurant. “It’s beautiful, and the setting is gorgeous.” Producing artistic director Richard Garner chased Tamayo down and gave him a lime-green Georgia Shakes T-shirt.
Suzanne Wakefield rode her bike to the park from her Virginia-Highland home twice on Wednesday. First to pick up tickets around 11 a.m. Then back in the evening to relax with her husband, Michael Shapiro, over a homemade spread of grilled veggies, chicken salad, wine and a brief candle. The couple —- he’s a computer specialist and she’s a housewife planning to go to law school —- said they hadn’t seen a play by this 20-year-old ensemble since its early days in a tent at Oglethorpe University.
But the witches put a spell on them.
“I’ll definitely come back to this [next year],” said Wakefield, who also plans to check out a regular show during the theater’s summer repertory season at Oglethorpe’s Conant Performing Arts Center.
Poncey-Highlands resident Eric Deren snapped a photo of the onstage blood bath with his cellphone and sent it to an acquaintance in Tennessee. Then he popped open a can of Red Bull and sprawled out with a group of 10 friends to enjoy their picnic.
“This venue is fantastic,” said Deren, a special-effects artist for a local film production company, after the show. “The marriage of the setting, the weather and the acting was perfect.”
Witches’ brews aside, several patrons were heard complaining about the lack of alcohol at the concession stand. Only water is sold, so if you want to imbibe, you must bring it yourself. As for seating, there are about 350 folding chairs arranged in the amphitheater’s concrete shell, and patrons are welcome to put blankets on the grass and cozy up to the stage.
You’ll want to pay attention to Chris Kayser’s hysterical turn as the Porter, who wears a diaperlike thing and confuses his trousers for a shirt. As the First Witch, Rachel Craw scratches her butt on the scenery and moves about in the most peculiarly rigid way: Her jaws operate as if on rusty hinges. She’s pale, lugubrious, morbid of voice and a dead ringer for Dame Edith Sitwell. Maria Parra, as the Second Witch, completely transforms herself into a macabre creature with webbed wings and a feral scream.
The problem with this “Macbeth” is that it’s so done-up with design that the magic of the language gets lost in the fuss (and the scratchy amplification). Macduff (Brik Berkes) is almost incomprehensible at first. Joanna Mitchell is out of her depth as the complex Lady M. And Daniel May fails to make a persuasive Macbeth —- although the monstrous roar he makes when he’s feeling all possessed is kind of great in an Incredible Hulk sort of way. You almost expect his eyes to emit a fiery glow.
In sum, this “Macbeth” lite feels right at home in the park. Live bats circle the sky as the onstage vampires hiss. The sword-slinging and cannibalism make for a good, cheap rush. You leave feeling more pumped up than troubled or moved. No homework required.
So what did Deren’s friend say in response to his cellphone postcard from Atlanta?
“Wish I was there.”
Exactly.
THE VERDICT: Not for the faint of stomach.
THE 411: 7:30 tonight-Sunday. Free. Georgia Shakespeare’s Shake at the Lake, Piedmont Park, Midtown. Tickets available on day of performance only. 10 a.m.-4 p.m. at the Conant Performing Arts Center, Oglethorpe University, 4484 Peachtree Road N.E. Or from 10 a.m. to curtain time at the Piedmont Park Visitors Center. Four-ticket limit per person. 404-264-0020.
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Out of Hand’s ‘Miss Julie’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW: “Miss Julie.” Through May 15.
Out of Hand Theater —- the youthful ensemble of hyperactive drama-heads that’s generated work about a bunch of deformed clowns (“Live Nude Bouffons!”) and satirized the sincerity of self-help culture (“Help!”) —- now takes on something completely different: a classic of European realism.
Given the reputation of these irrepressible unconventionals, we feared they might turn Strindberg’s 116-year-old “Miss Julie” into an S&M orgy, an MTV homage, a musical comedy, even. After all, this roundelay of rough-and-tumble sex and ruthless psychological manipulation is a play with a scandalous past, so why not run with it?
Fortunately, director Ariel de Man gives a revival that’s at once titillating and respectful, that builds suspense by playing up the characters’ ambiguities, rather than portraying them in reductive moral and emotional terms. True, “Miss Julie” bristles with whips, kitchen axes, fetishisms and untamed erotic entanglements —- when’s the last time you saw a program that credits a “historic and sadomasochistic adviser”? —- but de Man and company only heighten the tensions that Strindberg created in the first place.
Seen through modern eyes, Strindberg’s passion is often so raw and extreme that it can’t help but verge into comic territory. Yet ultimately the story of Miss Julie, the servant she seduces and his intended, the cook, is a tragedy of reversed fortunes and devastating consequences.
As written by the Swedish master, Miss Julie is a femme fatale who thinks nothing of ordering the handsome manservant Jean to lick her shoe. As portrayed by Maia Knispel, who is emerging as one of the city’s most incandescent young talents, Miss Julie combines the brazen libido of Lady Chatterley with the cruel intentions of Dickens’ Miss Havisham and Estella. She has alabaster skin, revealing decolletage and a heart of stone.
But once Miss Julie has her way with Jean (Adam Fristoe), he turns the tables on her and plays her like a fiddle. You could argue that Fristoe is too sweetly boyish for this brutal, Stanley Kowalski-style role, but he has so much fun driving Miss Julie over the edge, and trading knowing looks with the audience, that he becomes a charming tantalizer. Fristoe’s Jean is a persnickety sensualist, smacking his lips over a piece of veal kidney, polishing his boots with extravagant dabs of shoe polish, pleasuring Miss Julie with kisses.
What of his love interest, Christine (Park Krausen), the cook who dozes off while he’s ravishing Miss Julie? She’s the only character with any integrity, and Krausen captures her strength and wisdom beautifully. As the self-destruction escalates, the class system erodes, and the vanquished Jean and Julie shuffle off in defeat, Christine is a beacon of faith and unconditional love.
Despite Out of Hand’s claim to the contrary, this isn’t the first time it’s staged a classic.
Four years ago, the theater announced its arrival with another shocking tale of violence, madness and eroticism: Cocteau’s “Indiscretions.” What’s remarkable is how much the group has matured. Like a sharp slap in the face, “Miss Julie” will take your breath away.
THE VERDICT: The Cook, the Count, his Daughter and her Lover.
THE 411: 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays; 7 p.m. Sundays. Also, 8 p.m. Monday; 2 p.m. May 14. Through May 15. $18-$20. Out of Hand Theater, 7 Stages, Back Stage, 1105 Euclid Ave. N.E., Atlanta. 404-522-6194, www.7stages.org.
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Black Crowes at the Tabernacle
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Chris Robinson, the lead singer of the Black Crowes, has the stick-figured body of a flamingo and the bearded face of Jesus Christ. But more importantly, he has soul â€â€? and that’s what sets his band apart.
He sings sounds more than words, and he moans more than croons, and he’s not afraid to get out of his band’s way when it’s time to let the groove take over. And, of course, the Crowes had an early hit with “Hard To Handle,” a cover of an Otis Redding song. Point being, Robinson and the Crowes are at least as plugged into black R&B as they are white Southern rock, which connects them more to the Allman Brothers Band than to Lynyrd Skynyrd or Kings of Leon. Sometimes the Crowes sound like the Rolling Stones circa “Exile on Main Street,” which makes sense since the Stones are famous for reimagining (or stealing, depending on your perspective) African-American blues and soul.
Thursday night’s show at the Tabernacle — the first of a four-night run — looked like a rock show and sounded more or less like a rock show. But it felt like a soul session, a Sunday afternoon church picnic jam, albeit one where the lead singer was wearing a T-shirt that said “Don’t Buy Weed From Speed Dealers.”
The Crowes, who formed in Georgia, have been on hiatus since 2002, and so the performance had the vibe of a homecoming. The band didn’t talk much between songs, didn’t launch into huge monologues about how amazing it is to be back in Atlanta. The musicians (five instrumentalists plus Robinson and two female backup singers) instead chose to communicate through their music.
It was a solid set, nicely balanced for fans of the Crowes at their jammiest and old-timers who want to hear the hits that made the band such a force in the early 1990s. And so “Jealous Again” and “Thorn In My Pride” and “Hard To Handle” all made appearances, and so did long instrumental excursions that sometimes surged toward a meaningful destination and sometimes just felt like time-killers.
The highlights were two beautiful late-set tunes, “Peace Anyway” and “Soul Singing,” that felt like lost gems from some late-’60s fantasy land, where music was uplifting and race was easy to transcend.
