I hold ambition of so airy and light a quality that it is but a shadow's shadow

What is it about Macbeth that gives it place in the high school senior English curriculum? What are we to gather from this play? That Shakespeare was a great playwright? He didn’t even write all of Macbeth. That Macbeth is a tragic figure? He was a murdering creep and deserved what he got. That ambition leads to downfall? Then why does every other class and piece of literature teach us that we should be ambitious enough to realize our dreams?

And then, if the play by itself were not enough to make students despise Shakespeare, the teachers assign stupid essays on stupid topics like ‘What is Macbeth’s tragic flaw?’ or ‘How does ambition destroy the Macbeths?’ or 'Is Macbeth Evil?' The answer to the last one is 'yes' and it doesn't take 2-3 pages to say it.

I think Macbeth should be removed from the textbooks and replaced with something cool, like Hamlet. Save Macbeth for later in life, like Shakespeare did. And while we’re at it, tell all the actors who believe in a ‘Scottish Play’ curse to grow up. Aside from the fact that Macbeth is one of the more dangerous plays to perform anyway, what with all the battles and ghosts and nutcases running around on a darkened stage, there is no curse. It’s like this article I recently read about the effect of sugar on children. (Thank you, Baxter Bugs, for pointing the article out.) If you think sugar makes your children hyper, and you think your children have eaten sugar, then you’ll think your children are hyper.

Nevertheless, I have a goal to see all of Shakespeare’s plays performed on stage, so when the opportunity presented itself in September 1996 to see Macbeth down in San Diego, I took it. Also, the tickets were a gift.

Up to this point, I had never seen Macbeth on stage before, so, although it wasn't the most meaningful Shakespearean experience I ever had, it was interesting to see how they did it. To leave the best for last, I'll begin by saying that most of the acting was only adequate. Macbeth was played by Victor Garber, who a few years later would impress me so much as Jack Bristow on Alias, but at this point in time I knew him best for his role in the 1973 film Godspell. His acting started out quite good, but slid towards one-dimensional as the play went on. During the second half, all his lines were delivered in the same half-shouting voice with a stiffened body that almost staggered instead of walked. On the other hand, the actress playing Lady Macbeth started out just awful. (She did manage to improve by the end, but that belongs to another category). There was no chemistry between her and Macbeth, and she goaded him on more like a mother than a wife. In fact, she kind of reminded me of me trying to get my kids ready for school in the morning so they wouldn't be late.

During the intermission, the guy behind me said to his companion, "Well she's ROTTEN, and he's not very good!" Pretty much my sentiments, only I thought Garber was a little better than that, at least to begin with.

I looked up Lady Macbeth's acting credits in the program, and saw that she had quite a few, including some classical theatre, but she'd only been in one other Shakespearean play (Merchant of Venice). I don't know if it was a lack of experience with Shakespearean verse – although she certainly had the quality of voice to make good with it – or if it was the director's concept of Lady Macbeth, but she was just too shrewish, not my idea of Lady Macbeth at all. (My idea of Lady Macbeth had been formed by an interview I’d read by Sinead Cusack, who had played the role. The interview can be found in the book Clamorous Voices, by Carol Rutter.) Some of the other acting was bordering on the inadequate, but I certainly expect more from the principals.

Macbeth is supposed to be kind of a scary play, but we shouldn’t fear the acting. We should be afraid of the witches and the ghosts and the murders and madness into which the Macbeths descend. But there wasn’t too much of that in this production. For instance, In the scene when Macbeth goes back to the witches and they tell him about the future, etc., they had this recorded voice booming eerily about Macduff being the only one Macbeth needed to fear, and that was spooky. But then the next prophecy, about Birnam Wood, was spoken by a soft melodious tenor voice that wasn't scary at all, and the last one about fearing no man born of a woman was spoken with even a lighter voice that sounded kind of cute. I wish they had all been as scary and ominous as the first one.

Finally, the battle scene at the end was kind of wimpy. The swords sounded fake and the choreography was uninspired. I kept thinking of all the work the actors put into that production of Macbeth in Ngaio Marsh's Light Thickens and thought they could've used a little of it here.

There were two things that saved the show from being a completely unfortunate experience. First was Richard Easton. He played King Duncan, the Porter, and the Doctor, and did excellent at all three, but his Porter was wonderful. I know there are people who don't like the Porter, but I don't know why. When he's played as well as Easton did it, it can be a delightful scene. Second was Lady Macbeth's sleepwalking scene. I wonder if that's what she auditioned with and why she got the part. It was like watching a totally different actress. It gave me chills.

The special effects were nothing out of the ordinary, but were effective: lightning, thunder, screeching owls (which were really hawks, but who's going to be that picky?). The costumes were fun: Hollywood’s idea of 11th-century Scottish, with kilts and metal-studded leather tunics over them for armor. (It’s my understanding that kilts didn’t show up in Scotland till about 500 years after the real Macbeth existed.)

The scene of the murder of Lady Macduff and her son was well played. The young fry of treachery had a weird kind of appearance, like he'd done his own makeup and used the wrong color pancake or something, but he was an all right enough actor. Lady Macduff was quite good – she put up a good fight against the murderers, but with two against one she didn't have a chance. She screamed as they stabbed her to death. I could tell by the audience reaction to her murder that it was very effectively done. I wondered how she would have done as Lady Macbeth.

One item of interest, and something I looked forward to seeing through the whole program, was how they got Banquo's ghost up to the banquet table. I held vigil on the banquet table, all the while ignoring poor Macbeth who was dutifully emoting on the other side of the stage. The table was stage left, and center stage was a large rectangular trap door that was opened at the beginning of the scene, and servants came up stairs through it bringing trays, goblets, etc., and setting them on the table. I tried to keep a keen eye on everyone coming up through the trapdoor, but I didn't see Banquo. There were some women servants, Seton, and a man servant with a cap on his head (who we'd seen before so I wasn't suspicious), but no Banquo. But still I watched the table. Then I noticed that this man servant was kind of crouching at the forward end of the table, behind two or three thanes, with his back to the audience, and he surreptitiously took his cap off. "Aha!" I thought. "That's it." Then I noticed two of the women servants were very unobtrusively putting something on his face. Then he sat down, and, when his cue came, he turned around, and voilà! there was a bloody Banquo staring at Macbeth. It was very cleverly done, and would have surprised me if I hadn't been watching for it.

So, in spite of some major disappointments, there were enough good moments in this production to make it a not unworthwhile evening.