MACBETH
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On the stage before the show, a woman in tie-dyed dance clothes moves modernly to the sounds of punk rock coming from a portable cassette player. Five people sit in the center of the nearly bare black stage in a circle of green light, engaged in what appears to be some magic energy-channeling exercise, quietly speaking lines from Shakespeare’s Macbeth. To one side sits a long-haired, androgynous young man, shuffling tarot cards by candlelight. On the other side two women sit doing homey activities–one knits, the other spins a top. These women are playing Lady Macduff and her daughter; when the play starts, they will be loudly murdered.
This is the Chicago Actors Ensemble’s version of Macbeth–fragmented, environmental, experiential, and creative. It begins with the murder of Macduff’s family–an event placed at the center of Shakespeare’s actual text–and then jumps backward and forward in time to tell the story of the Scottish warlord who, egged on by his viciously ambitious wife, murdered his way to the throne before being unseated in a rebellion led by the vengeful Macduff.
