'Screw your courage to the sticking-place ...'

By Milton Bass

The word most used to describe the works of William Shakespeare is universality and we continually marvel at how his humanity looks back at us every time we stand before a mirror. Tina Packer has a gift to go with her encyclopedic knowledge of the Bard and his works. And once again in the present production of "Macbeth" that is spanning the summer at Shakespeare & Company in Lenox, she makes us think in personal terms as well as general. This happened to me last year with "Coriolanus" in conjunction with local politics, but this time around the wily director expanded my horizons to national and even international conundrums.

In her director notes, she explained why she decided on this play and what she was attempting to achieve: "Trying to find some understanding about what is going on and shed some light on the excruciating fact that people perpetrate violence on others was my primary motive to explore "Macbeth" and then ask: Can artists make any difference to this situation?"

Using a cast of eight ("And one man in his time plays many parts.") to play the normal multitudes in "Macbeth" put the audience on notice that human nature was involved here, that things were going to shift, sometimes from one person to another, sometimes the many personalities inside of one. People would dissolve and reappear as would time from past to present to possibly future.

The three witches came to us in various forms but to me they were Dick Cheney, Karl Rove and John Ashcroft whispering in their leader's ear, telling him of things to be, things to beware, things that could not go wrong even if the impossible happened. You cannot be harmed by man of woman born unless the Birnam Woods come to Dunsinane. Or the Arctic glaciers start to melt. Or the economic wonders of the '90s turn out to be frauds.

With eight actors doing the work of 40 you have either a brilliant ensemble or chaos and this few, this multi-faceted few, are doing wonders with their talent. When Lady Macbeth bursts upon us sucking her finger and clutching her Raggedy Ann, you know you are not in Barbie land. Macbeth and Banquo, combat buddies who trust their backs to each other, still have their own lives to lead when the battle's lost or won, when the hurlyburly's done. The witches' foretelling makes its mark, leaves a germ in each brain, persuades you to keep your back protected by continually whirling.

Dan McCleary's Macbeth for all seasons ranges from the semi-military haircut to fighting in an automatic weapons era with a staff and sword while wearing a breastplate to an affable Saddam in a double-breasted suit to show he is a peace-loving man. Intermixed are the Hitlerian rages as the curtain is falling on the Umpteenth Reich. And as he and his queen stood on the balcony and waved to the crowd, she in her little pillbox hat, I could think only of Juan and Evita Peron on their balcony in Rio with the crowds going mad in front of them and the huddled masses hidden in the rear. This is a chimerical production in every aspect of interpretation, one in which the three hours whiz by as you leap from one dangerous pinnacle to the next.

This is not a production of "Macbeth" that will please those who prefer historical renditions of a classic. This is not a production that will please those who do not like to have to think and interpret as they watch. I have seen innumerable productions of this play over the years in every form and manner (My favorite might be the movie version done by Orson Welles), and I found this one incredibly stimulating for these parlous times. Tina Packer and her most talented cast have gone out on a limb and are sawing through it near the trunk every time they go on stage. Their names are Johnny Lee Davenport, Jennie Israel, Judith McSpadden, Jason Asprey, Carolyn Roberts, Dan McCleary, Henry David Clarke and Michael Hammond. I would also like to mention costume designer Govane Lohbauer because some of those shmates are brilliant.

This is not a perfect production by any means. Sometimes fair is foul and foul is fair. You may find it as stimulating as I did or you may not. But it is a rare theatrical experience. Stand not upon the ordering of your going, but go at once. (The previous sentence is a quote from "Macbeth" or Doris Kearns Goodwin. I cannot remember exactly, but I did want to attribute.)