Synetic Theater, a group participating in Washington’s six monthlong Shakespeare festival, has accomplished what Cliff’s Notes and Hollywood have been trying to do for decades: it has given aggravated students Shakespeare without its most troubling component: Shakespeare.
This avant-garde Macbeth is without dialogue, and arguably without Shakespearean influences altogether. Rather, the play’s literary passion and violence has been translated into the new, equally baffling, medium of interpretive dance. For those unfortunate souls whose high school knowledge of Macbeth has escaped them, the plot is quickly lost in attempts at recollection; for those even more desperate individuals who have escaped Macbeth, there is nothing to do but sit and mindlessly follow the sensuous and often frenzied moves of the dancers.
The set, however, is communicative of the shadows that hang over Shakespeare’s written play: It is medieval, dungeon-like, and leaves a lot to the imagination of the audience. The plot’s enigmatic twists and turns hinge on the familiarly infamous three witches, who appear from volcanic trap doors to dance exotically in costumes that confuse their genders.
Not completely devoid of the usual toil and trouble, these witches, as the program proudly proclaims, are “modern-day spiritual counterparts”—a priest, rabbi, and imam—that confuse the play’s theme and become symbolic conundrums rather than illuminations.
Despite the politics of the witches, the play’s choreography and fast-beat music accurately capture the emotionally exhaustive violence of Macbeth that can become lost in Shakespeare’s dense verse. The audience seems to hang on every facial contortion, and correctly reads the seductive body language of Lady Macbeth as a warning of corruption, and turns to Macbeth’s solid and angered countenance as a sign of his psychological conflict.
Macbeth literally spends his physical life on edge, all volitalie costumes and sudden moves. As in literal Shakespeare, however, Macbeth’s trials are not without appropriate comic relief, and a promiscuous guardswoman and mechanical mutton eaters provide the audience with some easily interpreted gestures of humanity.
The silent audience rippled with excitement when Macduff, the anticipated man-not-of-woman-born, arrived bare-chested and ripped. Macduff, battled the much less shapely Macbeth and vanquished him, leaving the audience to watch two surprisingly evocative scenes with Ladies Macbeth and Macduff. Lady Macbeth, no longer resplendent in a red-gown, makes her final appearance in white, screaming inaudibly and fiercely rubbing the blood from her hands. Lady Macduff, having been left to tend her children while the husband fulfills his prophesy, is raped in a remarkable dance sequence in which no direct physical contact is made.
By the play’s end, all attempts at interpretation have faded, and the playgoer’s mind is given over to the rush of endless physical exertion. While the action would be disturbed by an intermission, it runs an excruciating one hour and a half, and exhausts the attention span of those struggling to follow the plot and review their Shakespeare simultaneously.
For $25, the play might satisfy those interpretive-dance veterans who know their Macbeth well, but provides a frustrating night for those who do not know (or simply cannot remember) the play. Synetic’s production of Macbeth has been strangely abridged, and is therefore not Shakespeare. Still, it is better than Cliff’s Notes.
Macbeth is playing at the Rossyln Spectrum. For tickets call 703.824.8060.
