Reviews
MACBETH Warren Enters Theatre/Casting Hall/BSUC Theater Department Tn
By
Mar 15, 2022, 13:03

Through March 18
MACBETH Casting Hall/Buffalo State College Theater Department/Warren Enters Theatre

Words, words and words are a key to the Shakespeare which has come down to us.
At least if you can hear all of them.
I know my hearing isn’t what it might be anymore but a trained actor friend of mine was several rows ahead of me in Buff State’s Upton Hall and he had trouble hearing some of the performers.
They were on stage for a production of “Macbeth,” a legendary story which speaks to each generation watching the world around them, with its bloody power struggles.
We don’t know a lot for certain about Macbeth, even with an alleged painting of him in an Edinburgh gallery of kings of Scotland.
We do know he was a type too common in Scottish history, a conniving soldier who takes the throne.
Being a king in Scotland was a very hazardous line of work and that was something Shakespeare had to be very careful about, since the new king of England around the time the play appeared was Scottish.
King James 1 of England or King James VI of Scotland succeeded Elizabeth I.
He was a survivor of Scottish and Tudor politics and really had a thing about witches and was a firm believer in them and the need to get rid of all of them.
He even wrote treatises about witches and witches are central to Shakespeare’s “Macbeth.”
The story is pretty well known, the great general and relative of King Duncan (Anthony Chase), Macbeth (Azarias Matthews) defeats a combined Irish and Norwegian army allied with a treasonous Scottish noble and is rewarded with great estates.
The witches tell him he will get a new title and that his ally Banquo (Link Hagerty) will have descendants who will be kings of Scotland.
The witches also tell Macbeth that he will be king and make no promises about descendants and kingships.
Lady Macbeth (Summer Harris) wants Macbeth to get a quicker promotion to king and wants Duncan killed when he visits Castle Macbeth near Inverness in the Highlands.
The assassination happens, Macbeth is named king, and the start of a bloodbath rolls across the stage as he moves to eliminate rivals.
Many theatergoers of the day might see that as Tudor tradition, since King Henry VIII devastated the nobility and aristocracy to remove threats to his rule.
Lady Macbeth may have persuaded her husband to kill the king and take the throne she starts having guilt about what has happened and eventually kills herself.
Macbeth has less guilt about his trail of blood, given the history of the Scottish nobility.
On the other side, relatives of King Duncan and relatives of other great nobles offed by Macbeth’s hit team gradually coalesce and move to topple the king, with the witches surfacing to complicated and obscure what’s going on.
The embattled king relies on prophecies to feel safe, even as the rival army comes in sigh, with tree branches from Birnam Wood obscuring their numbers and Macbeth discovers a principal rival was born by Caesarian section, making him eligible to kill the usurper king.
The death is as non-violent as possible.
It’s all a great story, with some strong performances and a simple but effective stage set from Ron Schwartz.
Ann Emo contributes some memorable costumes, particularly Lady Macbeth.
Because this is a college production, there’s a large cast, including dancers.
The three witches (Marykate Beyer, Sierra Munt and Bobbi Clarkson) are very good.
The big issue is that many of the performers have trouble mixing the lines and the performances on a set which clearly affects the sound.
\Director Jonathan Seinen has that intermediate week between the two-weekends of the production to work on the lines, the enunciation and the projection.
While the canon of theater is deservedly changing, there is no substitute for Shakespeare in readying young people for a career or just being able to say they were once King Henry at Agincourt, Lear on the Heath or Lady Macbeth desperately trying to clean the blood off her hands.
Student theater is an up-and-down effort, with the lines here a good example.
While many of the people in the audience when I saw the show were clearly other students, that doesn’t mean people on both sides of the fourth wall won’t benefit from “Macbeth.”

A.W.



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