Review of Macbeth 1969 At Long Wharf Theatre

Adapted and directed by Eric Ting, Macbeth 1969, running from January 18 to February 12 at Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven, is bound to polarize audiences. Purists will undoubtedly be put off by the grafting of The Tragedy of Macbeth, penned in the early 1600s and set in 11th-century Scotland, onto a Middle American rural hospital circa Christmas 1969.

But how many playgoers can be intractable purists when so many major works receive unorthodox treatments? Macbeth adaptations have been set in post-colonial Haiti, feudal Japan, 1970s Pennsylvania and contemporary Mumbai, underscoring the universality of the play’s themes. Shakespeare himself took tremendous liberties with what was known of historical fact.

The question, after such drastic relocations, becomes: What is gained and what is lost? (And perhaps, what of the playwright’s original vision?) What should be gained is the chance to show that the play’s themes resonate as clearly in 1969 Middle America as they did in medieval Scotland. Sadly, this is never accomplished (partly because the 1969 Middle America setting is never fully realized). What remains is the opportunity to highlight threads from the play, whether real or imagined. Ambition, temptation, human weakness and susceptibility to bad counsel are all present in this adaptation, but Macbeth 1969 would seem to catapult to the forefront another explanation for Macbeth’s evil turn—the trauma that war induces.

Score one for topicality, as our oft-damaged heroes return from Iraq, Afghanistan and other engagements. It’s not a crazy leap, but one questions whether there is enough present in the original play (which scholars believe is incomplete) to pull off this high-concept experiment.

A sense of unease in the theatergoer is invoked when urged to read the synopsis in advance, an unease compounded by the (far more usual) announcement that discussion will be offered afterward. Should not a play—like a meal, film or musical performance—be capable of standing on its own? Yet I felt compelled to consult the synopsis several times as the play unfolded.

Despite transporting Macbeth to other settings, most adaptations tend to be pretty faithful to the characters and plot. And it’s here that Macbeth 1969 gets lost in the weeds. I can live with the streamlining of a play of a score or more characters to only seven—such are the leaner, meaner times in which we live. But in this case, such slimming leads not only to actors playing multiple characters but even to individual characters serving more than one role in the play. I struggled to make sense of it all.

The lead role is ably performed by McKinley Belcher III, who apparently is no stranger to Macbeth, having played the titular role for the Kingsmen Shakespeare Company in southern California. But he must be experiencing time warp, because his 1969 Macbeth is a returning (Vietnam, presumably) war hero. George Kulp is said to be a politician and hero from an earlier war, while Barret O’Brien doubles as heavily bandaged soldier Banquo and draft dodger Macduff.

Rounding out the cast are three nurses who, like the three witches in the original play, are given to prophesy. (If your nurse begins prophesying, demand another.) Nurse 1 is a head nurse authoritatively played by Socorro Santiago (although her elocution was occasionally lacking). Shirine Babb is Nurse 2 and wife of Macbeth, with whom she has recently been reunited. Jackie Chung is Nurse 3, a young pregnant mother abandoned by her husband, Macduff. Thus, the Macduff character is saddled with the conflicting roles of cad, peacenik and hero (and perhaps carrier of Ting’s politics as well). The entire cast seems capable, but Belcher and Babb are the strongest and a couple of scenes between them crackle.

However, multiple characterizations aren’t the only major problem. Despite sterling work from set designer Mimi Lien, lighting designer Tyler Micoleau, and sound designer Ryan Rumery, neither 1969 (a harrowing year, to say the least) nor Middle America are successfully evoked. Plays tend to be an artificial medium, but some ability to suspend disbelief is nevertheless necessary to identify with characters and their travails. Macbeth 1969 required the atomic wedgie of belief suspension.

The biggest reason the play’s 1969 Middle America setting isn’t felt is that the attempt to marry it with medieval titles and Shakespearean language comes off nonsensical. Telling someone in 1969 Middle America that he was just appointed Thane of Cawdor and would soon be King would have been absolute gobbledygook (although somewhere there’s probably a band called Thane of Cawdor). What has been lost from this adaptation of Macbeth is all of the sense and much of the sensibility. I couldn’t help thinking that it might have worked much better if the whole thing had taken place in Macbeth’s damaged mind.

Smaller things are lost as well. What is lost from Macbeth 1969 is the eeriness of witchcraft and the sense of the inevitability of fate in a more superstitious era. What is lost is the starkness of the moor and the isolation of a cold, dank castle. What is lost, ironically, despite hospital setting, is the failure of hospitality subtext that made Macbeth’s central crime even darker. I, and others, struggled to keep track of what language was cast aside and what language was put into other service than the Bard of Avon intended. At times, the beauty of the Bard’s language itself seemed lost, the actors unable to make it serve its updated context.

I had other quibbles about Macbeth 1969 as well. It may potentially be a can of worms, but I do sometimes ask myself what effects—intentional or otherwise—racial casting choices may have on a play. Do racial reassignments shed new light, illustrate commonality of human experience, reflect some interest or issue of the author, or in some cases even do harm? I’ll look right past the fact that the play’s two most weak or evil characters are also its black ones, partly because I thought they were the two strongest actors.

But as one married to an Asian woman, what I have difficulty overlooking is an almost cartoonish portrayal of a pregnant Asian nurse by Chung, mined for moments of unlikely humor, like her failed attempt to bend and pick up objects from the floor (when most, if not all, Asian women would have squatted confidently). Sadly, this cheap laugh was one of the scenes that drew the most enthusiastic reaction from an audience desperate to find common ground with the characters.

And why cast that nurse as Asian? Is it just to round out the rainbow coalition of nurses (black, Hispanic and Asian)? Is it because Ting himself is Asian? Is it to evoke the Asian theater of the Vietnam War and issues of abandoned pregnant women overseas, in which case a more Vietnamese-looking actress might have resonated better?

But the biggest remaining issue I want to address is the Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) thread running throughout the play. How ungenerous of me not to embrace the approving backdrop of veterans and medical specialists who would endorse these themes! How niggardly of me not to applaud these underlying themes when, according to the playbill, “artistic expression can facilitate the healing of victims of psychological trauma”! But the cynic in me smells the setup, a play enslaved to the director’s politics, an errant experiment reaching out to noble causes in search of validity.

Ironically, if you have good seats, as I did, you may gain additional perspective (intended or otherwise) on PTSD. The blood in the play is not quite like HBO’s Spartacus productions, but it flows brightly and freely and isn’t entirely cleaned up as the play progresses. It appears meant to make the audience recoil. Characters are extinguished with a pillow only feet away from the audience. Guns fire loudly. Directed by David Anzuelo, fights are well-executed and quite physical but overly long, as if this was the one and only thing in Macbeth 1969 that had to be 100% true-to-life and take place in real time.

A seat right in front of the stage proved a mixed blessing, seemingly putting me right in the action. My silenced cell phone vibrated against my thigh at the precise microsecond that a gun pointed straight at the character in front of me was fired and blood squirted three-dimensionally through the air toward me. I almost had a heart attack. Couple that with vivid scenes that dredged up unpleasant memories of miscarriages witnessed and an elderly gentleman dying in my arms in a froth of blood, and I briefly wondered if the intent was to have the audience experience PTSD firsthand.

Macbeth 1969 runs 110 minutes without a break, as if Ting was afraid the audience wouldn’t return after an intermission. A few audience members might have been tempted to grab the nearest potted plant, like shrubbery from Birnam Wood, and inch toward an exit. There were enough small pleasures to keep most in their seats, however. The pacing of the play was good. Segues were lively and well-executed, with someone always entering stage left an instant after someone else exited stage right. A snowstorm was convincingly rendered. Subtlety was shown at times, for instance when a wavering gun rose into view from behind a hospital bed, the first indication that a character was not fully dead.

A sex scene was also nicely done, the tantalizing possibility of ascending to the throne (whatever that would mean in 1969 Middle America) fueling Macbeth’s wife’s excitement. It was hard not to chuckle as Lady Macbeth’s “unsex me now” speech was delivered during lovemaking and punctuated by orgasm. Obviously, this returning soldier evinced none of the sexual performance issues that frequently accompany wartime PTSD. Perhaps the scene was meant to illustrate that power is an aphrodisiac.

At the end of all of this fault finding, I’m not telling people to eschew this well-meaning play. It’s entertaining, challenging and has an immediacy that will keep you engaged. See it because it will stir in you the kind of internal argument that it did in me.

Recently, the suburban New York Times restaurant reviews have adopted ratings of Don’t Miss, Worth It, O.K., Don’t Bother. While these terms are terribly ill-suited for restaurant reviewing, they work surprisingly well for theater. Despite some glaring faults, Macbeth 1969 is “Worth It”!

“Worth It!”

Macbeth 1969, Running January 18-February 12, 2012 at Long Wharf Theatre, 222 Sargent Drive, New Haven, 203-787-4282, www.longwharf.org