‘Macbeth’ makeover only goes skin deep
Writer Oren Stevens and director and conceptualist Ariel Craft have said some of the creative sparks for their “MacBitch” are, in addition to Shakespeare’s bloody tragedy, campy high school catfight films like “Mean Girls” and “Heathers,” as well as William Golding’s “Lord of the Flies.”
Yet the Breadbox Theatre world premiere, seen Thursday, Aug. 3, at the Exit Theatre, feels more derivative than inspired.
That’s in spite of a lot of promising ingredients: an all-female cast of 10; a slick, geometric set design (by Randy Wong-Westbrooke) whose asymmetry makes dynamic every configuration of actors; a constant swirl of movement, by Craft and choreographer Margery Fairchild, that gives the whole play a touch of magic. The way groups glide in and out, a new set of arms blossoming into position on each successive beat, it seems only natural that a trio of witches (Jessica Waldman, Carla Pauli, Mikka Bonel) might charm — or curse — this world, delighting in each fresh atrocity with the creepy, vacant
smiles of attic dolls.
But creepiness is only superficial in “MacBitch.” A high school doesn’t become as scary, as dehumanizing, as desperation-inspiring as a medieval Scottish battlefield just because you give a couple of nasty opening lines to queen bee Duncan (Amitis Khoroushi) and her second banana Cameron (Cassie Rosenbrock). It’s as if the show hopes to conjure the macabre aura of “Heathers” just by putting its actors in preppy blouses, blazers and plaid jumpers and hoping you remember how high school is supposed to feel.
Part of the show’s problem is in the way it reworks Macbeth as Maxine (Lauren Hayes), a senior on the first day of school. After she narrates the school’s entire hierarchy to her sister Ladybird (Maria Leigh), a hopelessly dorky freshman, she has only these words for herself: “I’m nobody.” In these early moments, Hayes channels the folksy, aw-shucks guilelessness of a young Jimmy Stewart — which never sits right with the bloodthirsty social ambition she has to vault into. Tragic protagonists have to be exceptional, enviable in some way even as they’re doomed, and from the beginning, when the witches regard fortune-telling cootie catchers — idle elementary school playthings made from folded paper — as if they’re sacred totems, “MacBitch” never decides to what extent it takes its characters seriously.
Hayes is equally ill at ease in the iambic pentameter Stevens mixes with contemporary speech. Shakespeare aficionados might relish the occasional plum of a “Macbeth” reference, but Hayes and many of the other actors lack the range or the clarity to machete their way through chewy syntax.
Still, some performers more than make do. Rebecca Hodges gives a breakout performance as Seymour, the bottom of the school’s totem pole, with a voice that seems to emanate straight from a chronic sinus infection. You can track her character’s whole development by how ravenously she chews on her hair in any given moment. Also a standout is the always-reliable Maria Leigh, even as Ladybird is saddled with headgear and a lisp that together muffle many lines. Few actors on Bay Area stages radiate a character’s intention so purely and so fully. She often gets cast as the sweet and innocent, but she always makes goodness so passionate, so awkward, even, that you fear her a little bit.
Her performance, though, isn’t enough to inject fear into “MacBitch.” As envisioned here, high school isn’t dangerous, just rote.