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bodyetalYesterday, right after Rosh Hashanah ended (as in we left the house the exact minute of sunset), me and TW went with our parents to see the Taffety Punk Riot Grrrls' production of MacBeth in DC, and it was excellent!
The show's cast was all-female, which was extremely interesting in combination with how MacBeth handles gender and especially masculinity; aside from the plays that are basically only about gender fuckery (like Twelfth Night or the significantly worse As You like It), I think MacBeth is probably the most intense and interesting Shakespeare gets about sex and gender. From Lady MacBeth's prayer to be unsexed, to her frequent challenging of MacBeth's masculinity in the light of his terror and guilt, to MacDuff saying that before he can take vengeance for his family as a man, he must feel his grief as a man--there's a lot to work with, and the Riot Grrrls do a lot with it!
Tonya Beckman as Lady MacBeth was incredible--granted, I've been a Lady MacBeth lover since I was a little baby lesbian first picking up Shakespeare, so I'm pretty biased, but her performance was incredible and probably tied with Lise Bruneau (MacBeth) for stealing the show.
Also, Teresa Spencer's portrayal of MacDuff's grief was so raw that I (Crow&) almost cried, and had to 'cheat' by giving TW control of the body to maintain our composure. (This is a case where it certainly helps to be cofronting with someone who lacks empathy--our makeup would've been in grave danger otherwise.)
The Wyrd Sisters are credited in the playbill as, well, that. Usually they're listed as the Three Witches, the Wayward Sisters, or the Weird Sisters. Their title as Wyrd even more heavily associates them with the concept of fate--or more specifically, Fates. In another review I read by Roger Catlin, it was said that the Wyrd Sisters were made more central to the show in this version, which was in line with the feminist bent of the production, already onstage when the audience enters, unspooling and cutting a red ribbon--the same ribbon that is cut when Lady MacBeth commits suicide.
Unfortunately, when we saw the show, the actress playing one of the Sisters was sick, meaning that she was replaced by an understudy and the Sisters weren't onstage when we entered. The understudy did a very good job, but she didn't get a costume and spent the whole time reading off a script, which undercut the Sisters' segments somewhat.
There was also an extended stand-up comedy bit towards the middle of the first act, which was funny, but a bit out of place and kind of ground the story to a halt. I probably wouldn't have kept it in, but I definitely enjoyed most of it it. And basically every other joke landed perfectly, many of them leaning on anachronism; the bell that Lady MacBeth rings to signal the time for Duncan's murder is replaced by a phone notification, which we found hysterically funny. When MacBeth loses his mind at the dinner party, Lennox takes his glass of wine with him when he leaves and spends the next scene drinking from a flask. MacDuff's kid pulls out a Nintendo switch in the seen right before his murder.
Overall, we loved the show, and if you can somehow get tickets (though it's currently completely sold out) we wholeheartedly recommend it! The stuff we didn't like didn't come close to ruining our enjoyment.
(Also, our mom ran into one of the actresses at Trader Joe's today and apparently she's super cool in person, so there's that.)
Review by Crow& with help from TW!
The show's cast was all-female, which was extremely interesting in combination with how MacBeth handles gender and especially masculinity; aside from the plays that are basically only about gender fuckery (like Twelfth Night or the significantly worse As You like It), I think MacBeth is probably the most intense and interesting Shakespeare gets about sex and gender. From Lady MacBeth's prayer to be unsexed, to her frequent challenging of MacBeth's masculinity in the light of his terror and guilt, to MacDuff saying that before he can take vengeance for his family as a man, he must feel his grief as a man--there's a lot to work with, and the Riot Grrrls do a lot with it!
Tonya Beckman as Lady MacBeth was incredible--granted, I've been a Lady MacBeth lover since I was a little baby lesbian first picking up Shakespeare, so I'm pretty biased, but her performance was incredible and probably tied with Lise Bruneau (MacBeth) for stealing the show.
Also, Teresa Spencer's portrayal of MacDuff's grief was so raw that I (Crow&) almost cried, and had to 'cheat' by giving TW control of the body to maintain our composure. (This is a case where it certainly helps to be cofronting with someone who lacks empathy--our makeup would've been in grave danger otherwise.)
The Wyrd Sisters are credited in the playbill as, well, that. Usually they're listed as the Three Witches, the Wayward Sisters, or the Weird Sisters. Their title as Wyrd even more heavily associates them with the concept of fate--or more specifically, Fates. In another review I read by Roger Catlin, it was said that the Wyrd Sisters were made more central to the show in this version, which was in line with the feminist bent of the production, already onstage when the audience enters, unspooling and cutting a red ribbon--the same ribbon that is cut when Lady MacBeth commits suicide.
Unfortunately, when we saw the show, the actress playing one of the Sisters was sick, meaning that she was replaced by an understudy and the Sisters weren't onstage when we entered. The understudy did a very good job, but she didn't get a costume and spent the whole time reading off a script, which undercut the Sisters' segments somewhat.
There was also an extended stand-up comedy bit towards the middle of the first act, which was funny, but a bit out of place and kind of ground the story to a halt. I probably wouldn't have kept it in, but I definitely enjoyed most of it it. And basically every other joke landed perfectly, many of them leaning on anachronism; the bell that Lady MacBeth rings to signal the time for Duncan's murder is replaced by a phone notification, which we found hysterically funny. When MacBeth loses his mind at the dinner party, Lennox takes his glass of wine with him when he leaves and spends the next scene drinking from a flask. MacDuff's kid pulls out a Nintendo switch in the seen right before his murder.
Overall, we loved the show, and if you can somehow get tickets (though it's currently completely sold out) we wholeheartedly recommend it! The stuff we didn't like didn't come close to ruining our enjoyment.
(Also, our mom ran into one of the actresses at Trader Joe's today and apparently she's super cool in person, so there's that.)
Review by Crow& with help from TW!
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Date: 2024-10-06 02:46 am (UTC)edit: also if you saw i forgot the title for multiple days. sigh. it was a good title i think