Something Wicked This Way Comes: "Macbeth" Hits Stages from Coast to Coast
Could Macbeth be to Halloween what A Christmas Carol is to Noël? Based on the number performances starring the Thane of Cawdor this month, all signs seem to point to yes. Among the various renditions, Shakespeare's tragedy exploring the darkest and bloodiest elements of human nature appears in wildly different venues on either ends of the country this month.
Starting October 20 and running through November 3, the Shakespeare Center of Los Angeles opens its "immersive" production of Macbeth. Directed by former Royal Shakespeare Company member Kenn Sabberton, The Tragedie of Macbeth is set in a haunted house where audience members walk through the play as it is happening. The show starts in the Shakespeare Center's parking garage, which stands in for the mysterious witches' heath, then winds its way through the castle. Pared down to seventy minutes with nine actors playing everyone from Macbeth to Banquo, the intimate nature of the show limits fifty spectators per performance.
In Cambridge, Massachusetts, catch a glimpse of Macbeth through the fog art installation currently set up at Harvard University's Arnold Arboretum. Fog x Macbeth takes place on Sunday, October 21 at 5 pm, and like the Shakespeare Center's adaptation, it is an abridged portrayal. This show is part of a larger exhibition by Japanese fog artist Fujito Nakaya, whose five fog sculptures situated in and around Boston are helping celebrate the twenty-year anniversary of the Emerald Lake Conservancy, a group dedicated to conserving the area's century-old park system created by Frederick Law Olmstead.
The Actor's Shakespeare Project (ASP), a Boston-based theater company whose mission is to share Shakespeare's immortal words with contemporary audiences, uses an adaptation by playwright Migdalia Cruz, whose full play is on stage now through November 11 at Brookline's United Parish.
Meanwhile, with jets of gray mist pulsing at various intervals as the backdrop, Sunday's free presentation will take place on the lawn next to the arboreteum's Hunnewell building. Audience members are welcome to bring lawn chairs or blankets and are encouraged to dress for the elements.
And finally, Macbeth was recently staged at a place where both actors and audience members deeply related to the characters they portrayed: Twin Rivers Correctional Institution in Umatilla, Oregon. One of the actors portraying Macbeth is currently serving life in prison for murder. (Reporter Noelle Crombie at the Oregonian goes into great detail about the performance and the organizations that bring acting programs to inmates.)
"I have done the deed" takes on new meaning, doesn't it?
