Tags
"Macbeth by the Sea" by John Hancock Productions, Edinburgh Fringe, Joe Janes, John Hancock Productions, Lori McClain, Macbeth, Ric Walker, The Spaces on the Mile, Theatre Review, Wendi Weber, William Shakespeare
It is mid-July and I am saying to my partner, “well, I’ve been working my way through the Fringe guide and the best title so far is ‘Macbeth by the Sea.’”
I have many questions. By far the biggest is: what is meant by “the sea?” Scotland has so few glitzy seaside resorts that it is little more than landlocked. The Macbeths have presumably left their castle for Portobello, or conceivably North Berwick. But these resorts were pretty scrawny in their prime – can they have been really viable holiday destinations during the pre-modern period?
I attend the show at the Space on the Mile seeking answers. It transpires that its seaside is half in France and halfway to nowhere. The play is a farce and the performers are so merry and expertly silly that they could probably tickle the same farce out of any combination of characters and circumstances. Joe Janes, who has written this play, concedes that it was going to be “Macbeth in Space” until they had finally erred on the side of the seaside.
As well as being a farce there are a couple of small layers of something else to “Macbeth by the Sea.” Its wow is certainly at its most strenuous when the Macbeths and their chums are jumping about, partying, playing tennis and fighting with tubiform foam swords. Yet this play has also found a kind of prose poetry all of its own, the whimsical patterns that are made in the sand where the rich brine of Macbeth meets the carnivalesque of the seaside world. Its whole appeal is possibly inexplicable but it is nonetheless looking for the theatregoer who is moved by the line “now is the winter of our discotheque” or whose universe is at peace when a masseur cries “out damned knot!” over Lady Macbeth’s shoulder blades.
It helps, incidentally, that Ric Walker, this Macbeth’s Macbeth, genuinely bristles with the gravitas of a Shakespearean tragic lead. If melancholy creeps into this show at any point, it reminds me that it is here from Chicago. It is the same melancholy of the Handsome Family (i.e. during their Chicago years) when they were an established married couple on holiday, like the Macbeths, ruefully observing where life had brought them to:
There’s a fiberglass castle in Wisconsin
Where kids race go-karts around a moat
Once we went up there in December
When every water slide and fudge shop was closed
Hoping to feel love under the icicles
All we did was drink in an empty bar
But stumbling drunk we crawled back to our motel room
And I fell against you and felt your beating heart…
Tychy 