Dark and stormy night suits bloody Bard offering
Director Miles Potter makes his production of the Shakespeare classic a good and gloomy tribute to the macabre
MACBETH
Where: Bard on the Beach in Vanier Park, to Sept. 20 Tickets: $ 21 to $ 40, go to bardonthebeach.org or call 604739- 0559
Ringed in red curls like an Annie gone mad, Colleen Wheeler’s Lady Macbeth is Shakespeare’s nastiest dame writ large. Forget TV’s boob- job “blond” broads and their phoney fights; this is a real housewife from hell.
From the moment Wheeler’s fiery Lady M. opens that fateful letter from her husband — the one telling her the witches hath spoken great portents — to her last gasp at guiltily scrubbing spots of blood from her hands, regicide has never looked lovelier than in Bard on the Beach’s new take on “the Scottish play.” Blood will have blood and, as those blood- red locks frame the production’s best performance, it becomes clear director Miles Potter is getting bloody good work from his women.
His Macbeth moves at a merry canter from one murder to the next, and all hail the witches — Dawn Petten, Lois Anderson and Susan Coodin — for setting the pace as collectively cool conjurors. Potter’s staging of their stirrings is simple, traditional and nicely effective, from lots of fog beautifully drifting in the breeze of Bard’s open- air venue to judicious use of masks as windows into the lost souls of hell. The deliberately drab natural dyes of the long skirts and tartans by costumer Mara Gottler, moody music by Murray Price and stabs of stormy lighting by Gerald King, complete this pretty picture of mayhem on the moors.
While Bob Frazer’s youthful timbre is at first perfect for our evil king, Macbeth’s descent should age the poor guy just a little more. Wheeler is the one to watch with her nicely nuanced arc from marital scheming to absolute madness, so it’s in their scenes together — especially a particularly raunchy grappling — that Frazer gains his greatest strength.
Potter could crack the whip on his troupe’s diction. Ian Butcher’s Macduff, his striking bald head steaming in the crisp opening- night air, now and then let himself off the strict leash of enunciation, while Anton Lipovetsky as king Duncan’s son Malcolm gave an awkward rhythm to the speech about “devilish Macbeth.”
Look to the oldest and ( almost) youngest performers for inspiration — Bernard Cuffling’s Duncan has a pleasingly regal presence and Joseph Gustafson gives young Fleance a sense of gravity. And kudos to the youngest, little Jordan Wessels, for a tidy brief bit as another of Mr. and Mrs. M.’ s many victims.
While most other men in the cast suffer as Shakespeare’s weird wordiness keeps things too talky, they can at least try to skewer each other through Nicholas Harrison’s effective swordfights. And as Craig Erickson has fun with the wildeyed wanderings of Banquo’s bloodied ghost, we’re reminded that Macbeth is at its best when good gloomy staging tempers all the melodrama.