THEATRE - Spotlight

Macbeth at the UTEP Dinner Theatre
by Jan H. Wolfe

The first characters we meet in Shakespeare’s Macbeth, his shortest and bloodiest play, are the three witches. They are always accompanied by thunder and lightening, seeming to cast an evil curse upon the entire proceedings. The famous incantation which opens Act IV, part of which is quoted above, probably scared the daylights out of the superstitious groundlings of early 1600, and that is exactly what it was designed to do. Rumor had it then that Shakespeare had actually stolen the curses from real witches, who then, angered, cursed the show and that curse has hung on for 400 years.

Most theatre people are very superstitious and will not even mention the name of the show in a theatre: it is referred to as “The Scottish Play”, or ”MacBee.”According to many authorities and the Wikipedia Encyclopedia, any poor uninitiated actor who offends the spirits by actually saying the words must dispel the curse by leaving the building, walk around it three times, spit over their left shoulder, say an obscenity, then wait to be invited back into the building. There are also other curses removing rituals which have sprung up over the years.

Why all this hullabaloo? Well, legend has it that a great many calamities have been racked up by productions from the very beginning. One of the first claims is that an actor used a real dagger for the scene in which he murders Duncan. That would surely be a problem in recasting the play. True stories of violent storms, riots, personal misfortunes, suicides and other deaths and near deaths for the actors during the run of the show just kept piling up for nearly half a century. According to an article in the Austin Chronicle by Robert Faires, sets have fallen down, dressing rooms have burnt down, actors and actors have died by the boatload in the last 135 years. Even Laurence Olivier was nearly smashed by a falling stage weight. No wonder the superstition continues.

That is, if you believe in curses, which UTEP Director Chuck Gordon does not? “I’m least superstitious person. I go into a theatre and the first thing I say is ‘Macbeth’.” And he’s still around to talk about it and to direct it for this April’s offering at the Wise Family Theatre.
“We are going to be historically accurate, which is kind of interesting,” he said, “We’re going with the 11th Century idea”, he went on, (since that was when the story supposedly took place). He explained that it was conceived as a “nightmare” play, everyone caught up in a nightmare, a world of blood. “We’re playing fast and loose, this is not a realistic production….we’re going for some rather abstract things theatrically.”

His vision of the play is to take it down to the primal level, to scare the heck out of the audience. It is, after, about murder, and more murder, and more murder. Evil is at the center of the play, and the witches are seen to control the actions of the others.

“It has sparked our designers’ imagination,” he said, “but it is not a Halloween show.” It is definitely not family entertainment. The audience is seated three quarters around and close to the stage, and hopefully will be suitably frightened. The set, designed by Ross Fleming, rotates on a double turntable to keep the action going. There are three real 15 foot dead mesquite trees, pulled out of Fleming’s ranch, grey and mottled, to give the eerie feeling of a nightmare.

Authentic (and expensive) swords and other weaponry are used by the thirty actors on stage. “It is quite an investment,’ Gordon says with a laugh. There is a lot of stage combat, directed by Gordon himself, which is why he added more than two weeks to the usual rehearsal period. Trevor Thurman is fight captain and weapons master. Stage combat must be very carefully choreographed and practiced: even then, there can be accidents. It is a very dangerous play to produce, with multiple fires on stage, people in flowing costumes, knives and swords flying around, and special effects galore.
That is probably why the superstition continues. The show runs at Wise Family Theatre from April 18 through April 27. I definitely want to see this show, but probably not from a front row seat! For reservations, call 747-5118.

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