Macbeth @ Fair Assembly/Arts Mission Oak Cliff
—Jan Farrington
You may never come closer to the dance of desire and ambition than this, just feet away from Lady Macbeth and her lord, two bodies entwined, pushing, urging—moving through the paces of their plot to kill a king and take his throne.
It’s sexy, and it’s chilling—just as Will Shakespeare must have seen it in his head.
Fair Assembly’s electric (and very good-looking) Macbeth at Arts Mission Oak Cliff brings together an actual “fair assembly” of talent, both onstage and off. Lit dramatically by designer Joshua Manning (spot-lit faces coming from the dark, wavering shadows on the walls and rafters of this vintage church space), and costumed sleekly by Steven Smith (the Ralph Lauren-ish party kilt is a keeper), this Macbeth is both action-packed and intimate, with a high energy level expressed not only in sword fights and midnight murders, but in the intensity of the physical onstage: soldiers hug, witches twist and clutch, a mother’s hands reach desperately for a child. A newly crowned queen quivers with alarm as her husband melts down—in front of everyone who’s “anyone” at the court.
Above all, there is eye contact. Not something that’s often singled out for praise—but in the afterglow of the performance, I realized many of the images replaying in my head were of “looks” between characters that brought vivid life to Shakespeare’s already none-too-shabby dialogue. One example: Lady Macbeth (Emily Ernst) locks eyes with Macbeth (Brandon Walker), mockingly telling him he’s not a man unless he “durst” kill Duncan, the king sleeping under their own roof. Once she has his buy-in, the lady leaves him with a memorably dismissive glance: “Leave all the rest (playful tap on the nose) to me.” Or another: The grieving Macduff (Carter Gill), his wife and children slain by Macbeth, aims a steady, unwavering gaze at this usurper king—crouched, sword turning menacingly in his hands, but the eyes are what you see, promising death.
It’s said you don’t do a King Lear unless you have the actor to play him—or Macbeth, I’d guess, unless you know the pair of actors you’d cast as lord and lady.
Brandon Walker gives an unusual but compelling performance as Macbeth. He enters as the “worthy” commander and comrade, a straight-arrow. Yet once he meets the three witches on a lonely path (Lillian Bornstein, Emily Bernet, Caitlin Galloway-Chapa) who promise him he’ll be king, we’re astonished at how quickly this at-ease military man turns away from a lifetime of honor to reach toward power and glory. (How can we still be surprised by that?) Macbeth becomes a jittery, un-easy climber, obsessed by doubts and visions—and never to be as comfortable in his skin again. Unlike the stereotype of the “she made me do it” Macbeth, it’s he who writes his wife about the witch’s prophesies; surely he knows her well enough to know he’s started a bad ball rolling. And though his arc takes him to a certain regretful self-awareness by the end, it’s far too late for redemption.
Emily Ernst glitters and appalls as Lady Macbeth. She grabs her husband’s letter with both hands, drinking in the dangerous possibilities. And when Duncan unexpectedly arrives to spend a night with them on his royal “progress” through Scotland, she is wild with excitement. The wine they give Duncan to make him drunk, she says, “hath made me bold.” Lithe in a champagne-white sheath, she stops, removes her high heels, and crouches down barefoot (in a move that makes us remember the witches), asking the spirits to “unsex me now” and give her the cold courage to see this deed to its end.
This is her moment. When Macbeth (having murdered the king) comes in with a bloody knife—pale, shaking, talking too fast—she takes hold. She smears the king’s sleeping guards with his blood, leaves the knife, and stages herself and Macbeth (“Places, everyone!”) in the role of grieving hosts.
But from here on, Lady Macbeth will be sidelined—outside the action, pushed away by her husband’s guilt and suspicion. At a court celebration, Macbeth can’t stop pacing and gibbering, as she (posing with a First Lady smile) waves her hand as if to say, “Oh, he’s a bit over-tired.” In a later scene, Macbeth speeds past her without a glance or word—the same husband who literally couldn’t keep hands off, now brutally pulling away. Her shocked, wide-eyed stare tells us how little she expected this.
Taken altogether, it’s a thoughtfully chosen cast well in command of Shakespeare’s challenging language. Flip Croft-Caderao is a loyal and likable Banquo, Macbeth’s friend and comrade in arms. He’s a man’s man, but with a father’s gentleness. Once Macbeth starts his climb toward power, though, Banquo and his family are in the way. Dennis Raveneau is a kingly Duncan and a lurching Porter, amusingly half in the bag (the correct condition for taking in Shakespeare’s comedy interludes).
Parker Gray and Thomas Magee play close-knit “bro’s” Malcolm and Donalbain, Duncan’s sons—who waste no time in deciding to flee Macbeth’s “pleasant” castle. Gray, playing the elder, does a great job with Malcolm’s frantic speech about what a bad king he’d make. (I have to read this part again from time to time, trying to unscramble what-the-hockeysticks Malcolm is up to.)
Mac Welch is unnaturally still and soft-spoken as Seyton (yes, his name rhymes with the Evil One), Macbeth’s endlessly loyal sidekick. We never know why he stays, but he does. And Shawn Gann’s strong voice does well delivering news, warnings and such in the role of Scottish nobleman Ross (with a few lines snatched from other characters).
Morgan Lauré is heart-tugging as Lady Macduff, wife of another rival to Macbeth, in a scene playing a ball-and-word game with one of her children (Nadine DeBerardinis). Both Lauré and company co-founder Ernst are listed as co-directors, but this is a collective effort. Fair Assembly calls itself an “actor-driven theatre company” and all members of the cast and production staff are encouraged to contribute ideas.
New York-based Sara Romersberger did the physical dramaturgy of the show, and directed the dynamic fight scenes. Ivan Dillard produced some eerie, droning, Celtic-adjacent original music, and Banquo (Croft-Caderao) spends some of his afterlife playing military-style drums as battle lines are drawn.
At the start of Macbeth, you need some truly weird sisters—the three “witches” who reveal Macbeth’s glorious future, and thereby ruin his life. Choreographer Emily Bernet has created a compulsively watchable movement language for her threesome (herself, Bornstein and Galloway-Chapa). They wriggle into the light in twisting, turning motion—all of them together as if joined at hips, arms and other bits of flesh. The witches’ pale faces shine; they tease and flatter Macbeth. It’s the show’s clearest shout-out to the Lecoq techniques (look him up) that have impacted the company; here we see the tensile push-pull of “invisible ropes” connecting the performers onstage. (Once you start looking, you’ll find those “ropes” become easier to see by the minute.)
And for the end action of Macbeth, you need a great Macduff; Fair Assembly has one in actor Carter Gill. He enters late in the game, and like Macbeth we see him first as a commander, a career military type. He is calm, respected, and immediately in quiet, complete command.
By the end of this story we will see him, perhaps with tears in our eyes, not as a soldier but a man—a father and husband. Shakespeare gives Macduff some short but extraordinary lines of dialogue. Told that Macbeth has slaughtered “wife, children, servants, all that could be found” at Macduff’s castle, he responds as any parent would, from the U.S. to Ukraine: “My wife killed too?...All my pretty ones?...What, all my pretty chickens and their dam at one fell swoop?” The young girl who sat across from me (with the stage space between us) put her head down and cried.
When his comrades advise him to cure his “deadly grief” with revenge, Macduff lets them know there’s no way he can hurt Macbeth as much. The words are flat and stark: “He hath no children.” Gill’s performance, though relatively brief, is essential to how we come out of, and what we take away from, this emotional and intense study of the human costs of ambition, war, and tyranny.
WHEN: Through May 15
WHERE: Arts Mission Oak Cliff, 410 S. Windomere Avenue, Dallas
WEB: fairassembly.com
