August 3, 2011
Bloody, brilliant
theatre
by Argus
Deep River Musical Society,
“Macbeth”, July 28-30, Childs Auditorium, Mackenzie HS
A more ambitious production of "The Scottish Play" has most likely
never been or ever will be produced in Deep River.
The Deep River Musical Society's show included almost Stratfordesque
flare with fantastic home-grown talent, and it was a pleasure to see
such fine theatre produced from such a small community.
The director, Jade Nauman, a Deep River native now studying theatre at
York University, must be lauded for her artistic vision.
The brilliant idea of transforming the normally impersonal Childs
Auditorium into a black box theatre with a three-sided thrust brought
the audience directly into the action.
Her updating of the play to a Soviet-era type Scotland, where Macbeth
takes the role of Stalin during "the Great Purge," not only brought
Shakespeare's words more clarity (as if they needed it), but it also
allowed the actors room to play and discover new aspects of their
characters.
Small touches were brilliant - the use of “underground radio” to
deliver the second prophecies for Macbeth's future, Lady Macbeth's
blood red gloves on the castle grounds - and the decision to have
Macduff strangle Macbeth to death with his bare hands in the final
scene provided a brutal but natural ending, bringing a personal depth
to the horrors of Macbeth's reign of terror - perfect.
We can only hope that as Jade's career grows (as no doubt it will) that
she finds time to come back and direct another show for us all to enjoy.
Any good production must be anchored by its lead actors, and this is
especially true of Macbeth, since the Thane of Glamis and his wife take
such a central role in all the action.
Deep River is blessed to have two talents such as Alastair McIvor and
Kate Guerout to take on these challenging personas.
McIvor's cracked everyman Macbeth was at times frightening to watch and
at others broke your heart into pieces when he was forced to do what he
did not want.
For this audience member, McIvor's performance was truly at a peak in
Act III scene i-b when he instructs thugs to kill Banquo and Fleance,
Banquo's son; it was the perfect depiction of a raving mad dictator
whose power and ambition know no bounds.
Towards the end of the production Saturday night, McIvor's performance
started to lose conviction, but at the end of a tiring three day run,
he can hardly be blamed.
Kate Guerout's performance was sublime. Every gesture and every word
had force and intensity behind it - and her mad scene (Act V, scene i)
could rival any performance, anywhere.
The energy these two threw at each other (and received in return) made
the show simply stunning to watch.
The cast as a whole was very impressive. Everyone knew their characters
and knew exactly what they were about.
Hats must go off to Lawrence Howe, the assistant director, and Nauman
who must have worked hard with their actors, especially the youngest
ones, to get such convincing performances.
It is not easy to understand the purpose and motivation behind some of
Shakespeare's characters, but everyone seemed to always have a purpose
in mind, which helped the action run smoothly from one scene to another.
There is not enough space in this paper to mention all the fantastic
roles and characters on stage, but two honourable mentions must go out.
One goes to Alison McIvor, who, as always, brought great energy and
emotion to her multiple roles. The scream she released as Macduff's
children are murdered (she played Lady Macduff as well as one of the
three “weird sisters”) chilled the soul.
The other must go to Jay Sur, who got the audience laughing
uproariously during his stint as the porter. His drunken doorman was
crude, rude, slovenly, and yet managed to enunciate every word clearly.
Not an easy task.
Kudos as well to Aimee DeAbreu and Leanna Fitzpatrick, McIvor's
blood-curdling partners in crime as the weird sisters, and to Marko
Pilic, who took the relatively wooden character of Macduff to another
level with the choking sobs for his murdered family as he squeezes the
life out of the tyrant Macbeth.
On a technical level, the scene changes might have been less numerous
and faster. Especially towards the beginning, when an audience needs to
be grabbed and engaged, there was too much time spent waiting for the
lights to come up.
Luckily though, the music and sound effects often kept the audience
distracted and at times prolonged the mood and emotion of the last
scene until the lights came up on the next.
Music in any production is hard to get perfect. Sometimes it is not
there enough, others it is there too much, and ends up being the thing
the audience is responding to emotionally rather than the acting itself.
For this viewer, I would have to say that I would have liked to hear
more actual music rather than sound effects. Sometimes it was hard to
determine whether the sound effects were meant to be environmental or
in a character's mind.
Also, important plot markers were somewhat muffled and lost in the
sound effects of the dizzying Act IV scene i, Macbeth's return visit to
the weird sisters.
All that said, the music did enhance the show a great deal, and it was
a superb choice to include it.
Whoever chose "Smile" as the final song deserves an extra round of
applause as it added a fantastic little twist to the production.
And blood - have we mentioned the blood? “Blood will have blood,” says
Macbeth, and this production made both bold and copious use of it. The
special effects crew deserves credit for making it appear as needed.
On the whole this production of Macbeth was an intense ride in an
intensely personal space.
A large bravo to cast and crew for bringing such vibrant and superb
theatre to our small town. Deep River is so lucky to have all of you to
give us such a quality production.
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