See it through

I went to see Macbeth at Chicago Shakespeare Theater on Friday night. Often this play is referred to as "The Scottish play," as tales of accidents and death have become a theatrical urban legend (Wikipedia)

In the theater world I had heard more than a few people say that this version was not very good. Chris Jones of the Tribune gave the show 3 out of 4 stars and created quite the discussion in the comments section of his review, with most refuting the 3 star review. Christopher Piatt gave the show 3 of 6 stars in Time Out and is generally more in line with my own opinions of the show.

In short, there was a lot of shock value but no consistent development of story. If you have a great projection designer (in this case Mike Tutaj) then use them throughout. Don't haphazardly use his skills to underscore items that don't need to be underscored and fail to use projections in points where it makes sense to have them. For instance, the famous dagger scene did not have a dagger projected though we did have a ring of haze incorporated for some weird reason. When Lady M goes crazy and starts sleepwalking, instead of projecting MacDuff's dead family some gruesome prop dead family was flown in from the ceiling.

I generally appreciate my Shakespeare on the minimalist side, preferring to focus on the language and story. When Bob Falls directed a recent, revisionist King Lear I hated it. It was very high concept to say the least, but he saw his ideas through to completion. I'm not sure what ideas Barbara Gaines actually had with this show.

Although I didn't like the show, I had 2 1/2 hours to think through a better way of staging it.