MACBETH
gorilla Rep's Macbeth is gorgeous fun. Played on the Shakespeare Lawn at Fort Tryon Park, against a backdrop of craggy trees between whose leaves we can spy the splendor of both the Cloisters and the Hudson River, the familiar play comes alive under the remarkable direction of Christopher Carter Sanderson and the vivid and vigorous acting of its sixteen actors. Lighting is provided from above by whatever celestial bodies inhabit the night sky, and from below by Gorilla Rep's trademark mega-watt torches, skillfully operated by Sanderson and various actors doubling as handlers. The resultant grand shadows tower against what feels more and more, as night falls, like dense forest. We are transported to the moody, mysterious Scottish landscape of the play: a place where witches and wickedness feel right at home: a spectacular setting for a ghost story like this one.
For just under two action-packed hours, Sanderson and his company hold us rapt as they retell the famous story of Macbeth and his Lady and their vaunting ambition. Breathlessly and without interruption, scenes unfold in front of us and behind us -- indeed, all around us -- in this dark enchanted theatre, from the three weird sister' anointing of Macbeth as King of Scotland to the final fateful duel between Macbeth and his mortal enemy Macduff. The relentless forward motion of the plot is paramount, played out in simple, gripping tableaux that are somehow at once raw and elegant.
Sanderson's staging is consistently ingenious. He brings Banquo back, silent but bloodied, to torment Macbeth in the banquet scene; he uses his chorus of actors to give life and voice, sensationally, to the three apparitions. Witches double as murderers to outstandingly sinister effect.
Larger-than-life personages burst out of the darkness to command our attention: those three shrill witches to begin with (Lynda Kennedy, Kina Bermudez, and Lauren Barrett Porter); and then a pompous old Duncan (Brian O'Sullivan), a proud and hearty Banquo (Russell Marcel), an equally proud but strangely centered Macduff (Sean Elias-Reyes), a feisty and well-liquored Porter (Peter Loureiro), and all the other familiar characters. In the middle of it all are the coolly virile and powerful Macbeth of Michael Colby Jones and the savagely focused Lady Macbeth of Anna Cody. Happily refusing to wallow in their character's psychologies, these two actors make Shakespeare's murderous couple come alive with brutal fascination: they are, I think, the best performances of these roles I've yet encountered.
Even if you think you've seen Macbeth, unless you've seen the Gorilla Rep production you haven't: not so boldly or viscerally, at least. Actors and audiences, trooping through the darkness as the play wends its outsized and irrepressible course, are engaged and enthralled; thrilled by the joyous novelty of collaborating in the open air to create theatre, as our ancestors did, from nothing but earth and sky and the passion of some roaming players.
Martin Denton, 2000-2001nytheatre.com
