Word: macbeths
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...have been a very lucky girl. Now I'm working and doing good work and loving it. I'm not going to say 'Woe is me.' I can't. I'm too happy that anybody noticed I had any talent at all. But I would make a wonderful Lady Macbeth. I'll wear a pair of platform shoes or something." Instead of Shakespeare, though, she is preparing yet another comedy, Big Business, in which she and Lily Tomlin play mismatched sets of identical twins for Ruthless People Director Jim Abrahams. And in the haze of hope, a musical biography...
...HAVE REAGAN attempt to reprise Nixon's role, therefore, is like asking Morgan Fairchild to undertake Lady Macbeth. The goal of any serious dramatic production--and for the first time, Reagan's audience is forced to be serious--is to achieve some kind of emotional catharsis. In witnessing the tragic fall of the protagonist, the audience can hope to achieve not only an understanding of the ephemeral nature of man's fortune, but also a sense of well-being based on the fact that, whatever their problems, they are not suffering like the poor schmuck on the screen...
Southern is more than adequate in this immensely difficult title role, capturing Macbeth's humanity without taking the edge off his viciousness; and his genuine British accent caressing the verse makes you sigh with relief and pleasure. Select moments of Southern's performance, such as Macbeth's monologue immediately following his murder of King Duncan, could even be mistaken for professional theater...
Unfortunately, Rubin's Lady Macbeth is not as consistently convincing as her better half. In her near-hysterical rendering of Lady Macbeth's opening speeches, Rubin seems to have approached her character as if the lady was pathologically insane at the onset of the play. Although her energy is limitless, and sometimes truly frightening, we are deprived of seeing Lady Macbeth's great descent into madness: only the amplitude of her performance, never the content, varies...
...ensemble ranges from fair to comically bad, and this too puts a hold on Freinkel's invention. But even so, she did not go far enough: in trying to mingle modern theatrical ideas with traditional Shakespearean performance, Freinkel has created a play with more internal conflicts than even Macbeth himself. Given the problems of producing college Shakespeare, perhaps she should have adopted a less reverent attitude and an even more experimental appraoch. Like its accursed protagonist, this production of Macbeth seems "cabin'd, cribb'd, confin'd, bound in to saucy doubts and fears...