A staged version of the Orson Welles-edited Macbeth (for radio broadcast) with the actors going in and out of Shakespearian character as well as radio actor characters they play. Very meta, very interesting, very fresh, yadda yadda yadda.
What was especially cool is that the way everything was presented forced you to actually listen to the Shakespearian English, which is quite often overshadowed by elaborate staging (standard productions), avant-garde staging (independent productions), or just trying to figure out what the hell is going on (high school English class). When acted with precision and clarity, the words take on a hypnotizing quality of their own, divorced from whatever it is you are literally seeing. The woman who was the 3 witches, in particular, had a way of speaking both theatrically and realistically, and made the witches’ cliché soliloquies sound new.
Additionally, the staging involved the actors speaking both on and off mike, which added helped to differentiate between internal monologue and external dialogue, as well as being used for emphasis. The best example of this would be that of Lady Macbeth, whose mad speech at the end of the play was given both on and off stage, on mike and off mike, was completely impassioned madness. It was even more impassioned than merely the character’s descent into madness and regret – it had been implied throughout the play that the radio actress, married to the radio actor Macduff, was having an affair with the radio actor Macbeth.
So, all was very well and good, until the discussion with the cast and the director afterwards. I’m not sure that I should stay for these sorts of things, because they end up being roundabout discussions and intellectual masturbation about acting and art method that kind of bore me, but I stayed for this one. By the end, the smart questions had been asked, many of the actors were licking each other’s method assholes, and the idea that “stillness is as important as movement” had been expounded so many times I wanted to throw a brick that would do much more damage moving than still.
Am I glad I saw it? Play = very good. Actors talking with their own words = *brain melt.*
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