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magidLast week I went to ASP's Macbeth, with an all female cast. The production is in Studio 102 in BU's arts building at 855 Comm Ave, the same odd space they used for Lear. As the previous show, the audience was diagonalized on both sides. This time, however, the angle was different, cutting off most of the staircase from the stage, and the audience was on three sides. With the two large columns in the middle, it was challenging to have the sightlines work for most people most of the time.
Even with some obscured parts (for me, the lower part of the staircase, and the action that happened lying on the floor), it was an excellent production. OK, there were a few transitions that felt not quite smooth (one or two abrupt lighting changes that seemed mistimed), but those were quite minor.
With an all female cast, there was the question of how to indicate characters' gender. I was very interested to see that the decision was that women had their hair covered, often with fringed scarves that definitely said "tichel" to me, while men went about bare headed. For the most part, that is: Lady Macbeth's sleepwalking had her hair uncovered. But the rest of the time, all the women in regular society (Witches, being out of the natural order, did not have the same rules.) were quite modest about their hair. Interestingly, they chose to have the doctor be female; that felt rather out of period, but really, there may have been wise women used instead of doctors.
The most noticeable scene involving the hair-covering was in the murder of Lady Macduff and her child, when the thugs first terrorize her, including uncovering her hair. Of all the violent scenes in the play, this one was the most graphic, strangely enough (the thugs wielding the Dripping Red Sponges of Death), not the other murders nor the battles. It felt a little unbalanced, actually, having that prolonged intensity for a somewhat less-central killing. (Side note: the same actor played Macduff and Lady Macduff; when Macduff heard about the loss of his family, it was much more intense than I've seen that done before, too. That part totally worked.)
The witches fascinated me. They were not in the drab colors that the rest of society wore, but a crazy quilt of reds and mesh and fur and strange hats. These were not ethereal witches, but very much a group of earthy women in a sisterhood, emphasized not only by their costumes but also in the second witchy scene by having other witches there as well. Interestingly, the second group of prophecies were much more clearly the effect of a potion allowing one of the witches to be possessed by different spirits, wracking her body as they did, quite graphically, all of them very different.
Side notes: I liked the variety of lighting used, including an array of table lamps clustered together on the dais in the corner of the stairwell. The sound effects were quite excellent too, setting the scene just as much as the stage.
Definitely intense. Well worth seeing.
There are a couple of exhibits up in the galleries by the theater space. What caught my attention most was a large part of one wall painted with blackboard paint, the question "What is sexy?" in the middle of it, with boxes of chalk available for people to write their thoughts. By the time I saw it, there were already layers of answers, ranging from "Backstreet Boys" (someone later crossed that out) to "boobs" to "sex" to all sorts of other things, most of them visual/physical. Some were incomprehensible ("305"?), some so overwritten they were impossible to read. I didn't see anything about smart people or funny people, so Pinkfish and I added those.
Even with some obscured parts (for me, the lower part of the staircase, and the action that happened lying on the floor), it was an excellent production. OK, there were a few transitions that felt not quite smooth (one or two abrupt lighting changes that seemed mistimed), but those were quite minor.
With an all female cast, there was the question of how to indicate characters' gender. I was very interested to see that the decision was that women had their hair covered, often with fringed scarves that definitely said "tichel" to me, while men went about bare headed. For the most part, that is: Lady Macbeth's sleepwalking had her hair uncovered. But the rest of the time, all the women in regular society (Witches, being out of the natural order, did not have the same rules.) were quite modest about their hair. Interestingly, they chose to have the doctor be female; that felt rather out of period, but really, there may have been wise women used instead of doctors.
The most noticeable scene involving the hair-covering was in the murder of Lady Macduff and her child, when the thugs first terrorize her, including uncovering her hair. Of all the violent scenes in the play, this one was the most graphic, strangely enough (the thugs wielding the Dripping Red Sponges of Death), not the other murders nor the battles. It felt a little unbalanced, actually, having that prolonged intensity for a somewhat less-central killing. (Side note: the same actor played Macduff and Lady Macduff; when Macduff heard about the loss of his family, it was much more intense than I've seen that done before, too. That part totally worked.)
The witches fascinated me. They were not in the drab colors that the rest of society wore, but a crazy quilt of reds and mesh and fur and strange hats. These were not ethereal witches, but very much a group of earthy women in a sisterhood, emphasized not only by their costumes but also in the second witchy scene by having other witches there as well. Interestingly, the second group of prophecies were much more clearly the effect of a potion allowing one of the witches to be possessed by different spirits, wracking her body as they did, quite graphically, all of them very different.
Side notes: I liked the variety of lighting used, including an array of table lamps clustered together on the dais in the corner of the stairwell. The sound effects were quite excellent too, setting the scene just as much as the stage.
Definitely intense. Well worth seeing.
There are a couple of exhibits up in the galleries by the theater space. What caught my attention most was a large part of one wall painted with blackboard paint, the question "What is sexy?" in the middle of it, with boxes of chalk available for people to write their thoughts. By the time I saw it, there were already layers of answers, ranging from "Backstreet Boys" (someone later crossed that out) to "boobs" to "sex" to all sorts of other things, most of them visual/physical. Some were incomprehensible ("305"?), some so overwritten they were impossible to read. I didn't see anything about smart people or funny people, so Pinkfish and I added those.