Allan Appel Photo
Tracy Griswold as Duncan surrounded by his happy kilted warriors.
Actors often superstitiously call the Tragedy of Macbeth “the Scottish play” to ward off the accursed bad luck of the o’er-leaping protagonist of Shakespeare’s great 1611 drama.
The talented thespians in the upcoming Elm Shakespeare Company‘s production shouldn’t have much to worry about: They’ve returned the play to its haunting and mythical Scottish roots, kilts and all.
The battling thanes did their killing in kilts Sunday night in the first full-dress run-through of the play at Edgerton Park on the eerie border between New Haven and Hamden. If the weather holds and nothing bad happens, the play will have 16 performances between Aug. 16 and Sept. 2.
You’re supposed to bring a blanket and picnic on the grass. Beware of who’s sitting next to you.
Oh those weird sisters (l-r) Francesca Smith, Kerry Tattar, Sarah Grace Wilson.
“I was interested in where Shakespeare diverged” from his sources, said Allyn Burrows, who is directing the play in Elm Shakespeare’s 16th season.
Shakespeare’s source for this and his other history plays was Hollinshed’s Chronicles, a kind of Wikipedia of the history of the British Isles of the time. The actual Macbeth ruled for 17 years, but Shakespeare did a lot of “compression,” said Burrows.
That research in part led Burrows and Elm City Shakespeare Artistic Director Jim Andreassi, who plays Macbeth, to do the play in kilts and true to the way Shakespeare may have imagined the history.
“Where he really diverged, and this is the key element, is Macbeth would have been justified in revolting against the king,” said Burrows as he settled in to watch Andreassi and the witches and soldiers, and a sensual Marianna Bassham as Lady Macbeth, go through their paces.
According to the Burrows’ reading of Hollinshed, “In reality Duncan’s grandfather killed Lady Macbeth’s grandfather. It was a blood feud.”
Neither (l-r)Mark Zeisler’s Banquo nor Jim Andreassi’s Macbeth are able to sleep the night of the assassination.
Burrows said that revenge would have been justified on those grounds alone.
After Macbeth demonstrates in the opening scenes his great military prowess, Duncan does not reward him with the appointment of a future kingship. He hands the kingship, that is the “golden round,” to his son Malcolm, to be called Prince of Cumberland.
That violated the Scottish tradition of the time, which called for the kingship to be passed to the greatest warrior, noted Burrows.
Macbeth, by medieval Scottish standards, was profoundly at fault not in the killing of Duncan, but in committing the deed in his castle on that tempestuous night. “What he did was he violated the code of hospitality by killing him in his own house. They were cousins,” said Burrows.
Instead of trying to come up with yet a new modernized version of the oft-produced play, such as Eric Ting did at the recent Long Wharf production, Andreassi and Burrows have burrowed down into the play’s roots and found something that feels wild and fresh.
80-year-old theater great Alvin Epstein plays the porter and the doctor.
In addition to a good old-fashioned medieval Scottish feeling, complete with kilted warriors unshaven and tattooed, the play features early Gregorian chant and original music and eerie sound effects composed by the sound designer Nathan Roberts.
Sound drives the play. Not only the sound of Shakespeare’s language so compressed it at points becomes more sound than sense. But the sound of knocking on doors during Alvin Epstein’s funny and haunting porter scene. The knocking truly has the metallic echo not only of an armed hand on fortified door, but of the hand of fate arriving at the castle as well.
Andreassi with Director Allyn Burrows.
Burrows’ other innovation is to give the witches, played with the brio of vulgar girlfriends on holiday, additional non-speaking roles as maidservants inside the Macbeth household. That drives home how since their first meeting, the witches haunt Macbeth and will not release their grip.
Burrows apparently can’t get enough of the Scottish play. In his capacity as artistic director of the Actors’ Shakespeare Project in Boston, Burrows is staging another Macbeth there this fall. Andreassi in that one will play Macduff, and the play will be set in the 1920s.
Elm Shakespeare Managing Director Margaret Andreassi said that ten area high school kids, called Elm Scholars, are in the production, four as actors and six learning the technical side of theater. She said she hopes that all the city’s 10th graders, for whom Macbeth is required reading, will attend the play. Click here for more info about schedule and details on the cast.