La Fille du Laitier
La Fille du Laitier's Macbeth Muet.
A black screen. A table, covered by a white cloth. Styrofoam cups and origami paper fortune tellers. These, along with performer-puppeteers Jérémie Francoeur and Marié-Hélène Bélanger Dumas, comprise both the setting and the characters of La Fille du Laitier’s Macbeth Muet, a silent pantomime version of Shakespeare’s classic. Using minimal props and a wealth of choreographed body language, Francoeur and Bélanger Dumas interpret the Scottish tragedy into a visceral and lavish affair that does full justice to the scope of the original play.
For the record, this reviewer loves Shakespeare for his language. But there are those who find it inaccessible. Macbeth Muet breaches that border by translating text into gesture and expression, a universal language. This opens up other possibilities for conveying Shakespeare’s intentions, a welcome approach for an often-staged play.
Macbeth Muet, part of the International Festival of Arts and Ideas, runs at the Iseman Theatre, 1156 Chapel St., through June 15.
Shakespeare’s Macbeth tells the story of a couple, Lord and Lady Macbeth, whose ambitions prove their undoing. Scottish noblepeople spurred by prophecy, their desire for power leads to a string of murders and, in time, all-out war. But the heart of the play beats in the complex and evolving relationship between them, marred by a child they could never conceive and a dream of creating a legacy that always lies beyond their reach.
Francoeur, as Macbeth, is relatable whether spouting monologues on the passage of time or staring into the audience with blank, tortured eyes that do the monologuing for him. Francoeur “struts and frets his hour upon the stage,” a weak-willed and yet somehow sympathetic general, aggressive in battle but spineless when it comes to his personal life and career. It takes a few hearty slaps from Lady Macbeth to spur him into action. But, like Oedipus Rex, the true tragedy of this character is that he cannot outrun his fate. Every move he makes brings him spiraling closer to his eventual doom.
That concept of fate is examined in a playful but not light-hearted manner in Macbeth Muet. The three witches are represented by black paper fortune tellers, the kind that children use to predict their futures. When, at the start of the play, Macbeth and his fellow general Banquo (represented by a Styrofoam plate with black, cartoonish circles for eyes) run into the trio of sorceresses on their way back from battle, two of the papers are unfolded to reveal two messages: Macbeth will become king, and Banquo’s son will too. There is no other option written on the paper, no choice to be made. What appears first to be a clever prop reveals a much deeper implication about the play: choice is an illusion, although it will take the characters the duration of an hour to discover that fact.
La Fille du Laitier
Jérémie Francoeur and Clara Prévost as Macbeth and Lady Macbeth.
Lady Macbeth, a role attributed to Clara Prévost but played with seamless grace by Bélanger Dumas (one of the show’s creators, alongside Jon Lachlan-Stewart), believes that she can take fate into her own hands. When her husband reveals the prophecy to her, Lady Macbeth convinces him that this is a call to action. Bélanger Dumas plays the character as Shakespeare wrote her, not as a seductive ingénue, but as a strong-willed and conniving figure whose machinations set in motion the events of the play.
In an added prologue, Bélanger Dumas and Francoeur act out the backstory that leads the Macbeths to their situation: They have tried time and time again for a child, with no success. In a sequence by turns hilarious and heart-wrenching, the pair cradles a series of eggs before smashing them in failure, representing the outcomes of each attempted conception.
“We wanted to really understand what that specific journey can do to a couple,” said Bélanger Dumas in a Q&A after the show. “You can see that not having a family, they couldn’t stay together while chasing power. And I think they crack because they don’t have that family.”
By contrast, the added prologues for the other Scottish noble families in the play — the Banquos and the Macduffs — show happy families with healthy children (intact eggs). The decision to depict the Macbeths’ past lends an added pathos that softens the audience’s intolerance for the actions that follow.
La Fille du Laitier
Lord and Lady Macbeth plot to murder the king.
Bereft of children, Lady Macbeth convinces her husband to murder King Duncan (represented by a large playing card) and claim his throne. The blood that spatters over their hands and clothing is lurid and startling. It lingers on the stage following the death sequence, making it especially convincing when the couple descends into twitching paranoia following their crime. “Out, damned spot,” cries Lady Macbeth in Shakespeare’s original; here, she doesn’t have to say it. The audience can see the red staining the scene, and can relate to her desperate and doomed pursuit of cleanliness.
Macbeth is a wordy play, but Francoeur and Bélanger Dumas manage to capture its spirit without ever vocalizing it. Cards with words printed on them are used on occasion, but the majority of the action and emotion is conveyed through body language. In a particularly disturbing — although sometimes comedic — sequence, Lady Macbeth throws herself around the stage, scrubbing at her bare hands, and at one point pauses to lip-sync along with the song playing (“The Sound of Silence” by Simon & Garfunkel) before slitting her throat with a knife. The audience can feel her pain, how she has braided herself a noose from her own crimes, without her ever needing to utter a word.
At the conclusion of the play, the witches’ prophecy has come true: Macbeth becomes king, but then is vanquished in battle and succeeded by Banquo’s son (a smaller plate, with black circle eyes). The battle is fast-paced and gory, as Francoeur and Bélanger Dumas shed their shirts, don swim goggles, and hurl cups of red blood at each other and the scenery. In the end, Macbeth lies dead in a mess of his own making. It’s a parallel to the battle at the start of the play, only this time, he doesn’t win. The cycle repeats itself; as Francoeur explained in the Q&A afterward, “there’s just going to be another one after you, another circle.”
“Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow,” as Shakespeare wrote. It all begins again. Francoeur and Bélanger Dumas gather up the mess, pile it on the table, and place the yellow fortune teller crown over it all. In a battle with fate, nobody comes out on top.
Macbeth Muet plays at Iseman Theater, 1156 Chapel St., June 14 and June 15 at 8 p.m. Visit the website for the International Festival of Arts and Ideas for tickets and more information about festival programming.