Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Sometimes you just have to say “Macbeth.”
“The Scottish play,” as it’s called by superstitious theater types, has long attracted actors and actresses who want to test and stretch their chops on stage and screen. Broadway has hosted nearly 50 productions of Shakespeare’s tragedy about the consequences of unbridled ambition, including two last year and not including the Kenneth Branagh-Rob Ashford version that transferred from England to play New York’s Park Avenue Armory in June. Next year, Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard will portray Lord and Lady Macbeth on the big screen.
5 comments:
I love Macbeth. It is one of my favorite plays to read, and to see performed, because it can be portrayed so many different ways. There is so much about Lord and Lady Macbeth that distinguish them from a textbook villain, and so I am looking forward to seeing what PICT Theater does with it. Ms. Pazerski's process in developing Lord and Lady Macbeth's relationship will give them that multidimensionality that some portrayals lack.
Macbeth is my favorite Shakespeare play without a doubt. Lady Macbeth is my favorite character due to her strong complexities, as she is neither a villain nor hero. She is just a person doing what she needs to do to survive. I am so pleased that someone has to guts to put on Macbeth. It is such a hard show to produce as it is Shakespeare, there's the superstition, and it can easily be done terribly. I hope that I can see the show as it is in Pittsburgh.
Having read both this Post Gazette article and the Trib one I'm actually quite excited to see how PICT's Macbeth builds upon one of Shakespeare's darkest plays and how they make it their own. There is obviously a level of multidimensionality being played with in this production as Ms. Pazerski (Lady Macbeth) has chosen to sway away from playing her role as the manipulative greedy villainous woman many productions portray her as, but rather as a woman crippled by the regret of a lost child desperately trying to make something new for herself after god has so aptly taken her old something away. This background Ms. Pazerski has created adds a new dimension to lady Macbeth that I'm throughly excited to see. From my perspective the single focus of many of the characters in Macbeth had always made it seem to me more like a folk legend or moral tale then a tragic play about real characters. I'm glad Ms. Pazerski is choosing to move away from these archetype like characters we often see in Macbeth by adding realistic means, sorrow and confusion in her complex character. The dimensionality she's creating through Lady Macbeth's loss of a child will hopefully bring this production a realistic perspective that gives potency to the underlying themes, specifically the complex of how power, and the prospect of it has the imminent ability to corrupt. By grounding the characters in reality this message will ideally have a greater impact on the audience, setting this portrayal aside from the innumerable others.
In short, I'm excited to see what they make of it.
I have written papers, done thesis', seen performances, and been involved with performances of The Scottish Play enough for me to say that it is easily my favorite of Shakespeare's 38 plays and 154 Sonnets. The storyline and character development invested throughout the play are so intriguing and it is always interesting to see it performed from a different directors perspective. I cannot wait to see PICT's version of Macbeth and how they will interpret the age-old text.
Having last read the play Macbeth two years ago, my detailed memory of the plot and characters have begun to leave me. What I do remember is the general consensus of the class that Lady Macbeth was twisted and craved power and that was her motive for pusher her husband toward murder. The fact that the actress was able to pick out that one line and understand and infer so much more about the character blows me away for not only the wisdom of the actor but brilliance that lives in Shakespeare. And its facts like that that make Shakespeare stand the test of time and still be relevant today. Women still loose children and couple have to learn how to move forward. This insight for me give the play a how other sense of depth that I plan on revisiting by not only reading the play but seeing this production as well.
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