By Robert St. Martin
Topanga Canyon, California (The Hollywood Times) 06/12/2023
Saturday evening (June 10) at the Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum in Topanga Canyon was the opening night of their production of William Shakespeare’s Macbeth. In Theatricum’s spectacular outdoor amphitheater, carved into the rustic hillside and surrounded by the Topanga woods, Ellen Geer directed a strong cast of actors in this play about the 11th century Scottish human killing machine named Macbeth who at times waxes into profound soliloquys without seeming to understand that these are projections of his wild imagination. Macbeth is an uncanny unity of setting, plot, and character, fused together beyond comparison with any other play of Shakespeare’s. This production of Macbeth captures the essence of Shakespeare’s tragedy with a clear understanding of the text of the play and clear delivery of the lines of the play with this large ensemble of well-intentioned actors.
This is the 50th Anniversary of Will Geer’s Theatrium Botanicum and a fitting time to revisit Macbeth’s most troubling supernatural tragedy, which – to my knowledge – was last staged here in 1994. Featuring two veterans of the acting company – Max Lawrence as Macbeth and Willow Geer as Lady Macbeth, we encounter two persuasive personalities, profoundly in love with each other, who resort to dreadful crimes and deserved catastrophes in this fast-moving play which is half the length of Hamlet. There is no question that Macbeth is a valiant but bloody killer and as such rewarded early on the play by King Duncan (Franc Ross) with the title of Thane of Cawdor. Max Lawrence manages to capture the smoldering violence of Macbeth fairly well and his initial hesitancy about regicide. He is good with the mastery of cadence in delivering Shakespeare’s lines in the soliloquys that reveal the visionary projection of Macbeth as an involuntary seer open to the witchy voices of the night.
On the other hand, Lady Macbeth as played by Willow Geer is far more enterprising than her husband until she falls into a psychic decline. She shares her husband’s lust for the throne based on the prophecy of the Weird Sisters (Witches) on the heath at the play’s opening. But the production makes a point of Lady Macbeth’s childlessness and her ferocity makes Macbeth remark that she should give forth male children only, given her “manly” resolve. From her point of view, Macbeth is not manly enough to rush the hand of time and murder Duncan: “Thou wouldst be great / Art not with ambition, but without / The illness should attend it” (I.5). So, she must prod Macbeth into action because, as he equivocates in a soliloquy: “I have no spur / To prick the sides of my intent, but only / Vaulting ambition, which overleaps itself / And falls on the other” (I.7). The play moves along well, especially in Act 2, with the murder of King Duncan by Macbeth and Lady Macbeth serving as the catalyst of Macbeth’s bloody deeds, in her resolve to attain the throne.
Shakespearean critics have often commented on the lack of individualization of most of the characters in Macbeth. In following the text of the play, it is not easy in a stage production to improve that. The minor characters are sketched lightly, and are seldom developed further than the strict purposes of the action required. The scene in which Lady Macduff (Claire Simba) and her young son (Elliott Grey Wilson) appear, and the passage where their slaughter is reported to Macduff (Aaron Hendry), have much dramatic value, but in neither case is the effect due to any great extent to the special characters of the persons concerned. Neither they, nor Duncan (Franc Ross), nor Malcolm (Cavin (CR) Mohrhardt), nor even Banquo (Jeff Wiesen) himself, have been imagined intensely by Shakespeare. Characters like Ross, Angus, and Lennox almost seem indistinguishable.
Perhaps this is why the audience warms up to the scenes where characters sound more convincing. The comic part of the drunken Porter at the Gate (also played by Franc Ross) is one of the most memorable performances in this production – effectively reinforcing the issue of male impotence in his comparison to the effects of alcohol: “Lechery, sir, it provokes, and unprovokes; / it provokes the desire, but it takes / away the performance: therefore, much drink / may be said to be an equivocator with lechery” (II.3).
Lady Macbeth is the most commanding and perhaps the most awe-inspiring figure that Shakespeare drew. Her absence after Act III makes the play less dramatically interesting. And the plot and Macbeth’s increasingly tyrannical and murderous behavior rushes along. The witches mean nothing to her, as she lacks Macbeth’s imaginings. The three scenes with the Witches on the heath are staged in an interesting way including some parts sung but they are not especially haunting. Sara Carpenter, Christopher Glenn Gilstrap, Claire Simba, and Sky Wahl appear at the start of Macbeth and set the tone of eerie blackness in the night. They are associated with thunder and storm but the sound effects on stage did not reinforce this as much as could have been. In the third meeting of the Witches, Hecate (Taylor Jackson Ross) joins the others on the heath as a strong female presence and a fascinating reindeer-horned headdress to reveal to Macbeth what the future will bring.
Darkness, we may even say blackness, broods over this tragedy. It is remarkable that almost all the scenes which at once recur to memory take place either at night or in some dark spot. The vision of the dagger, the murder of Duncan, the murder of Banquo, the sleep-walking of Lady Macbeth, all come in night-scenes. The Witches dance in the thick air of a storm, or, “black and midnight hags,” receive Macbeth in a cavern. The challenge with the outdoor stage of Theatricum Botanicum is how to make the stage dark enough and lighting strategically placed to reinforce these night-scenes. The famous sleep-walking scene of Lady Macbeth does not really work because there is just too much light on stage and the pace of that scene rushed. Rich as are the metaphors of light and darkness in Shakespeare’s text, the production aims at delivery of lines over staging.
It is no accident that the image of blood is forced upon us continually, not merely by the events themselves, but by full descriptions, and even by reiteration of the word in unlikely parts of the dialogue. The Witches, after their first wild appearance, have hardly quitted the stage when there staggers on to it a “bloody man,” gashed with wounds. His tale is of a hero whose “brandished steel smoked with bloody execution,” “carved out a passage” to his enemy, and “unseamed him from the nave to the chaps.” Banquo’s ghostly appearance does not seem bloody enough for a man who has murdered with “twenty trenched gashes on his head,” or “blood-bolter’d” and smiling in derision at the man who ordered his murder, namely Macbeth.
This production of Macbeth is a fairly standard staged version which takes few liberties with the Shakespearean text. So often in memorable performances of Macbeth, we have come to expect unusual staging in film versions, be it the samurai-retelling of the “tale of sound and fury” in Kurosawa’s 1964 Throne of Blood or Roman Polanski’s unflinchingly violent 1971 adaptation of Macbeth or the recent minimal almost-Brechtian rendering in Joel Coen’s The Tragedy of Macbeth (2021). The production at Theatricum Botanicum reflects the mission of the theatre to make the language of Shakespeare understandable and include as many willing actors as possible in its productions. To that end, it succeeds well.
Following Macbeth, the season at Theatricum Botanicum continued with A Midsummer Night’s Dream, on Sunday, June 11, with a 3:30 p.m. matinee. Queen Margaret’s Version of Shakespeare’s War of the Roses, compiled by Ellen Geer from the Bard’s best-known history plays (Henry VI Parts I, II and III and Richard III) will open on June 24. A Perfect Ganesh by Terrence McNally opens July 15. Unlike most theaters in the L.A. area that stage continuous runs of a single play, Theatricum will perform all four plays in repertory, making it possible to see them all in one single summer weekend. Tickets to performances range from $15 to $48. Premium seating is available for $60.Children 4 and under are free. Pay What You Will ticket pricing (cash only at the door) is available on Friday, July 21 at 7:30 p.m.
Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum is located at 1419 North Topanga Canyon Blvd. in Topanga, midway between Malibu and the San Fernando Valley. The amphitheater is terraced into the hillside, so audience members are advised to dress casually (warmly for evenings) and bring cushions for bench seating. Patrons are welcome to arrive early to picnic in the gardens before a performance. For more information and to purchase tickets, call (310) 455-3723 or visit theatricum.com
Photos Courtesy of Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum