New City Players present ‘Macbeth’

Steeped in murder and mayhem, William Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” is a tragedy for our time.

Yes, it was written four centuries ago. But with omnipresent violence and murder most foul (to quote “Hamlet”) contaminating our news feeds, with virulent political infighting the order of the day, Shakespeare’s action-packed study of the darker side of human nature remains chillingly resonant.

Director Tracy Manning and her design team – scenic designer Ryan Maloney, lighting designer Conner Reagan, costume and hair/makeup designer

Leslie Cook, and sound designer Ernesto Gonzalez – have taken the drama’s darkness as their creative cue.

With the audience seated on either side of a rectangular playing area marked by five slender tree trunks on each end, players and theatergoers are thrust into a world of swirling fog, unnerving sounds and predominantly black costumes that suggest Scotland via strategic swaths of tartan fabric. The spooky environment inhabited by the three prophetic witches never really goes away, so for the play’s nearly two-and-a-half-hour running time the audience lives in Macbeth’s turbulent, dark universe.

Revisiting the plot isn’t necessary, but should you want to do a little prep, get to the theater early and read two items in the “Macbeth” program. On the page titled “Dramatis Personae,” little stick figures of each character are accompanied by trenchant (and funny) character descriptions.

In terms of performance, this “Macbeth” is not so much thrilling as earnest. The actors know, understand and communicate their lines, but only rarely does an actor achieve the stylistic essence of his or her Shakespearean character.

Jordon Armstrong does it, gloriously, as the drunken Porter. Rachel Finley does it in two roles, as the unnerving leader of the three witches and as Lady Macduff, who fails to heed warnings of the doom heading for her and her children. Stephen Hedger is a stirring Malcolm, and Skye Whitcomb projects strength as the doomed Duncan, though sometimes his speech loses out in combat with sound effects.

Seth Trucks, a fine actor with lots of Shakespearean experience, is the heretofore valiant Macbeth, a man initially undecided about murdering Duncan in order to make real the witches’ prophesy of his ascension to the throne. Laura Plyler is Lady Macbeth, the ruthlessly ambitious woman whose relentless goading unleashes the murderous tyrant in her husband. Though the two complex, towering figures are central to the play, Trucks is almost understated, and Plyler only comes alive in Lady Macbeth’s handwashing mad scene.

New City’s “Macbeth” is a murky production, in deliberate and unintended ways. Yet the power in Shakespeare’s memorable lines – a witch intoning “something wicked this way comes” as Macbeth arrives, for example – is undeniable. That a shattering tragedy remains so relevant says everything about Shakespeare’s understanding of the darker side of human nature.

“Macbeth” is a New City Players production running through Sept. 1 at the Vanguard, 1501 S. Andrews Ave., Fort Lauderdale. Show times are 8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday, 4 p.m. Sunday. Tickets cost $35 ($30 seniors, $20 students). To order, call 954-376-6144 or go to www.newcityplayers.org/macbeth.