Macbeth: 2008

Adam R. Perlman, BACK STAGE

In Macbeth: 2008, a Polish take on the Scottish play, the visuals are the thing. Situated in a breathtaking open-air space in Brooklyn's Dumbo neighborhood especially configured for this production, the audience can't help but glance at the downtown Manhattan skyline or the two magnificent bridges that frame the space on either side, which isn't to say that what happens on stage isn't also a feast for the eyes - so long as you have a strong stomach. In translating what may be Shakespeare's most nihilistic play, director Grzegorz Jarzyna, who also did the adaptation, has cooked up a slice of military-industrial brutality with a purposefully acrid Middle Eastern flavor. Little that is obviously Shakespeare has survived in the mix - most of the weird sisters are excised and the supertitles look familiar only in the more famous soliloquies - but if the result less resembles one of the Bard's plays than a live-action David Lynch film, the text does seem the inspiration for this production.

Within the canon, Macbeth is a notoriously problematic play. It's a tragedy that almost never arouses sympathy - which is what made Patrick Stewart's recent conscience-stricken take on the title role so rewarding regardless of the surrounding production's excesses. Macbeth and Lady M., a couple with murder in their hearts and blood on their hands, lack the wit or humanity of other similarly situated ghouls (for a contrast, consider Sweeney Todd and Mrs. Lovett). In Shakespeare's play, we never know the characters long enough at the top to find them heroic, never see them sufficiently contrite to forgive their flaws. Their fall isn't from grace but from monstrosity to madness - and it's precisely that gruesome journey that Jarzyna and his febrile interpretation chart.

This Macbeth (Cezary Kosiński) is a remorseless killer. In his first appearance, he enters a mosque, seizes upon a rebel at prayer, and dispassionately decapitates him. It's a neat prefiguring of Macbeth's own death scene but also a clear message that this is a man who needs little provocation to murder. In giving in to the short character arc, Jarzyna eliminates anything in the way of tension. I think he's fine with that.

This isn't a production that wants you to lean forward; instead, it asks you to sit back as a stylized parade of nightmarish iconography washes over you. Look, there's a giant bunny rabbit, an orgy, Uncle Sam, a depressed Lady M. whose bruised bouffant conjures the singer Amy Winehouse, and Macbeth snarling about the mighty two-and-a-half-tier set like Bob, Twin Peaks's otherworldly baddie. The production is just as spellbinding aurally. Individual headsets compensate for the noise level of the bridge traffic, piping in dialogue mixed live with excellently creepy cinema-style scoring.

But if Macbeth: 2008 is full of sound and fury, it would be wrong to say its Middle Eastern mise en scène symbolizes nothing or, for that matter, that this arresting demon dream is a tale told by an idiot. Its images are rich yet oblique, creating the tasty paradox of an aggressive production that takes its foot off your throat only when it's time to digest its pungent vision.