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Three-woman cast conjures a concentrated Macbeth

by Frances Marion Platt
August 29, 2016
in Stage & Screen
0
The three witches who were originally Macbeth’s incidental catalytic force expand to encompass the entire cast of characters in the current Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival production of "the Scottish play." Three splendid actresses – Nance Williamson, Maria-Christina Oliveras and Stacey Yen – do amazing work bringing a somewhat trimmed-down version of the tragedy to life, swapping roles in a heartbeat but managing to carry the audience along with them for the scary, bumpy ride. You have only a few more chances to see it, with HVSF’s summer season winding down: August 20, 22 and 26, all starting at 7:30 p.m. (photo by T. Charles Erickson)
The three witches who were originally Macbeth’s incidental catalytic force expand to encompass the entire cast of characters in the current Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival production of “the Scottish play.” Three splendid actresses – Nance Williamson, Maria-Christina Oliveras and Stacey Yen – do amazing work bringing a somewhat trimmed-down version of the tragedy to life, swapping roles in a heartbeat but managing to carry the audience along with them for the scary, bumpy ride. You have only a few more chances to see it, with HVSF’s summer season winding down: August 20, 22 and 26, all starting at 7:30 p.m. (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

If you discount Titus Andronicus as an aberration unworthy of the quill of the mature Shakespeare, the grimmest of his plays by far must be Macbeth; every viewing or rereading brings that message home again most powerfully. Yes, the unscrupulous couple whose greed and ambition lead them inexorably down a path of escalating murder and betrayal do eventually get their comeuppance. But it’s not the sort of vengeance that supplies a feeling of satisfaction and closure to the audience. One comes away, rather, with the sense that the world of humans is a dark, perhaps irredeemable place, with or without interference from occult entities.

Nevertheless, it’s a work of undeniable dramatic force, with many passages of absolutely splendid language. So theatrical companies continue to defy all the dire superstitions associated with “the Scottish play” and mount new productions every year, and audiences unafraid of being bummed out flock to see them. So many are the Macbeths that it takes a fair bit of ingenuity to come up with an approach to distinguish your production from all the others.

The Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival (HVSF) has gone for the gimmick this season: a risky business, but one that pays off in spades by showing us this very familiar material from a fresh point of view. Specifically, it renders the violent world of Macbeth and grasping mankind in the voices of women exclusively. The three witches who were originally the drama’s incidental catalytic force expand to encompass the entire cast of characters. Three splendid actresses – Nance Williamson, Maria-Christina Oliveras and Stacey Yen – do amazing work bringing a somewhat trimmed-down version of the tragedy to life, swapping roles in a heartbeat but managing to carry the audience along with them for the scary, bumpy ride.

But this Macbeth, directed by Lee Sunday Evans, is no feminist/revisionist screed. On the contrary, gender becomes almost irrelevant in this lean presentation of the tale, as the conflict is boiled down to its bare bones of pure emotion. All three actresses skillfully employ movement, often dancelike, and their vocal instruments, often chorusing in harmony or discord as need arises, to convey layers of meaning that the Bard’s words do not. An unusually grounded and physical Macbeth, Oliveras nimbly surfs the peaks of the thane’s sense of destiny and the valleys of his self-doubt. Yen is a fierce-yet-birdlike Lady Macbeth, speaking with her fingers in ways that evoke the meaning-laden gestures of Balinese dance. Evoking one character after another after another, the versatile and supremely expressive Williamson proves once again why she is a HVSF mainstay, and probably will remain so as long as she can stand upright and utter two words in succession.

Costumes, props and sets in this production are minimalist, a movable bank of lights supplying the audience’s collective imagination with most of the staging. Mortal battles consist of two people running at each other, suddenly coming up short, looking upward at the ceiling of the Boscobel tent and wailing out a melodic “Aaaaaaa.” The “dagger which I see before me” is as much an invisible trick of Macbeth’s fevered mind as is the unwashable blood spot on the sleepwalking Lady Macbeth’s hand. They’re negotiating their tightrope without a net, these three, and manage to pull it off through sheer brilliance of acting and tightly coordinated timing.

Some Shakespeare productions are all about the gorgeous language. This one is more about the bursting inner landscapes of the characters that language embodies. It’s odd, it’s fluky and it works. You have only a few more chances to see and hear it, with HVSF’s summer season winding down: August 20, 22 and 26, all starting at 7:30 p.m. Ticket prices vary. Boscobel House and Gardens are located at 1601 Route 9D in Garrison. To order or for more information, visit https://hvshakespeare.org.

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- Geddy Sveikauskas, Publisher

Frances Marion Platt

Frances Marion Platt has been a feature writer (and copyeditor) for Ulster Publishing since 1994, under both her own name and the nom de plume Zhemyna Jurate. Her reporting beats include Gardiner and Rosendale, the arts and a bit of local history. In 2011 she took up Syd M’s mantle as film reviewer for Alm@nac Weekly, and she hopes to return to doing more of that as HV1 recovers from the shock of COVID-19. A Queens native, Platt moved to New Paltz in 1971 to earn a BA in English and minor in Linguistics at SUNY. Her first writing/editing gig was with the Ulster County Artist magazine. In the 1980s she was assistant editor of The Independent Film and Video Monthly for five years, attended Heartwood Owner/Builder School, designed and built a timberframe house in Gardiner. Her son Evan Pallor was born in 1995. Alternating with her journalism career, she spent many years doing development work – mainly grantwriting – for a variety of not-for-profit organizations, including six years at Scenic Hudson. She currently lives in Kingston.

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