Word: macbethness
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...shocked by Susannah Mandel's article about Macbeth. I saw it on opening night and returned on Saturday night to see it again. Mandel writes one of the worst reviews I have ever read. It is as if she has a personal vendetta against Pablo Colapinto '00, the actor playing Macbeth. She spends the entire article laying into him. She writes: "Speaking in a tone of mingled peevishness and self-pity, he proceeds to recite Macbeth's lines as though he's whining at Fate for giving him such a hard time...
...sure if maybe she forgot to see the play or maybe she knows little about human emotion. Whatever the case, Colapinto's Macbeth was not begging us for pity, as many actors cast as Macbeth do. His Macbeth is confused and frustrated by his fate. He gives short, confused little laughs here and there. He was not asking for pity, but rather questions his fate which he has accepted. That was the new twist in Colapinto's Macbeth. In many productions Macbeth is pathetic, and as the play progresses one almost wants his end to come. Colapinto's was more...
...quite disturbing to read Susannah R. Mandel's review of the Loeb Mainstage production of Macbeth in your Oct. 24 Arts section. The offensive review was not a critique, but rather an out-right attack on Macbeth's lead actor, Pablo Colapinto '00. I was an audience member on opening night and left the theater having enjoyed a fine production that pulled together amazingly well in the four short weeks since it was cast. Opinion on the specific interpretation, which Mandel calls everything from "bizarre" to "whiny," was indeed ranging, but it would be highly unfair to say that anyone...
Even more unjust is to say that the lead performance "spoiled" anything other than Mandel's unyielding notions of what Macbeth should be. In fact, what she takes such issue with in Colapinto's performance as "petulant muttering," his casual attitude as if "enjoying a private joke," fit rather well with the chosen interpretation; to say that his performance "prevents the production from generating fear and explosive emotion which the play is intended to evoke" is to say that there is a right or wrong way to perform it, which has no strong basis in the idea of interpretation itself...
...quality elements of the production can't redeem this fundamental problem; the character of Macbeth is so central to the drama that his presence, and in this case, his imbalance, influences everything around him. Until the play's actors and producers can agree on an interpretation that will both work on all levels of the play's performance and agree with the text on which it is based, this version of Macbeth will be--if you'll forgive the irresistible reference--but a walking shadow: a poor player indeed