A tale of two Makbets
I FIRST watched a production of Makbet, Rolando Tinio’s translation of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, way back in 1989.
Tinio himself directed the Teatro Pilipino production at the Metropolitan Theater, casting his wife, the incomparable Ella Luansing, as Lady Macbeth (Senyora Makbet).
While I have forgotten much about the production, this I do remember: the audience, all high school and college students (save for my husband and I), tittering and giggling as poor Luansing bravely delivered her “Out damn spot” monologue — standing naked in the middle of the stage — and an enraged Tinio climbing onto the ledge of the loge section, screaming at the students about their behavior.
I walked out of the theater after the show thinking that this production would have been better suited for the Cultural Center of the Philippines’ sophisticated audience, which would have appreciated Tinio’s vision of having Lady Macbeth strip down to her panties in an attempt to strip off the guilt of the murder that is at the center of Shakespeare’s tragedy. I thought he was foolish to present it at the Met knowing that his audience would have been callow children assigned by their teachers to watch the show, who would be discombobulated by the vision of a naked middle-aged woman. The impression that I got was that he was so caught up with his art, he forgot about the people who would be seeing it.
Twenty-seven years later, I again got to see Tinio’s Makbet performed — a starkly different production in ever way, the most important point being that the audience was not forgotten.
Directed by Nonon Padilla and produced by the Arts and Culture Cluster of De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde, the show takes place in the school’s black box theater, a far cry from the elegance of the Metropolitan Theater in its prime. It is an intimate production, with the action taking place just a few feet away from the audience, so close that sweat and spit are part and parcel of the show.
Unusual for a black box performance, the setup is almost standard. The performance area is on one side of the room facing tiered seats. Adding a technological twist are video monitors installed along the walls next to the audience — and on these screens are shown live video of the action that happens offstage, most notably the murder of Haring Duncan and the chamberlains, and The Witches’ famous spell “Double, double toil and trouble...” The screens are also used to flash the English text of the lines being delivered by the actors, which is very helpful at certain points when Tinio’s Filipino wanders into the obscure (though the technician in charge of this mixed things up quite a bit on press night and one hopes that this is resolved by the time the show officially opens).
The set is bare, an open area surrounded on two sides with scaffolding on which run lines of thick elastic garters continued in white paint on the black floor, an abstract silhouette of a branch hanging on one side. This and the costumes are designed by the wonderful Gino Gonzalez who uses odd materials like quilting, elastic garter, and the sort of cheap gloves one finds in P88 stores, cling wrap, the cardboard centers of rolls of tape, umbrellas, and plastic straw to make amazing costumes that suggest something vaguely Japanese (Senyora Makbet’s plastic straw wig is a marvel).
With a basic palette of black, grey, silver, and white, he creates a society that is both cohesive and yet divided into factions. Touches of red are reserved for Makbet and his Senyora, and these are increased as more and more people die in service of their ambition, culminating in Senyora Makbet’s trailing red gown and red gloves as she begs the blood begone in her most famous monologue.
There are other colors used — sparingly — in the production. Orange strips of fabric cunningly arranged under cling wrap on the top of the Three Witches’ heads give the impression of brains exploding from their skulls; the eerie green of the lights shining from the eyes of a slithering snake; a fuchsia flower lamp that serves as a campfire (portable lights are used very cleverly throughout the production). The overall effect is perfect for a tale that revolves around ambition, betrayal, murder, and inevitable doom.
Nonon Padilla chooses to make incarnate the guilt that weighs down the couple at the center of the tale — the Makbets find themselves attached by long red ropes to their victims who trail them as they walk around the stage; Makbet literally carries his wife on his back after her death.
The couple are played by the luminous Irma Adlawan who very nearly overshadows playwright George de Jesus III who returns to the stage after a long absence. The veterans are joined onstage by the President of the College of Saint Benilde Bro. Dennis Magbanua, FSC, who is most effective in his first stage outing as the ghost of Haring Duncan. The Three Witches — Magda de Leon, Christine Crame, and Sunita Mukhi, all administrators in the school — are particularly horrible (in a very good way). Recruited from outside the school are theater veteran Andrew Cruz (Macduff); film, TV, and theater actor Joey Paras who makes a hilarious drunken Porter; and independent film and theater actor Timothy Castillo as Malcolm.
A standout is a Benilde student, Kaila Ababao, who makes quite an impression in her short scene as Senyora Macduff — she is someone to keep an eye on.
For a production that helps its audience understand the story through action, staging, costumes, and translation, it is disconcerting that its end is so tone-deaf.
Instead of ending the show with Makbet dead and Duncan’s son hailed as the new king of Scotland, Mr. Padilla opts to tack on a rambling Filipino monologue, given by Mr. Paras, on a new theory that Shakespeare was a closet Catholic, some history of Henry VIII’s establishment of the Church of England, and a passage from Dante’s Inferno — in Italian! — all of which basically expands on what he has already included in the Director’s Note in the play’s program. And little of which is seen in the actual production. Case in point: “... Macbeth is not just a story of tyranny and ambition, It is the reenactment of the fall of Man from the Garden of Eden,” Mr. Padilla writes in his notes. This “innocence” is barely seen as his Macbeths, Lord and Lady, are so very quick to embark on their bloody enterprise, with barely any hesitation.
As is, this monologue completely discombobulates the lyricism of both the play and Mr. Tinio’s translation.
The impression that I got was that he was so caught up with telling everyone about his theory, he forgot about the play.
Tickets to Makbet are available at TicketWorld (891-9999, www.ticketworld.