Macbeth

Written by William Shakespeare

Directed by Lisa Freinkel

At the Loeb Mainstage tonight and tomorrow

TO INNOVATE or not to innovate? 'Tis it nobler to experiment with the basic texts of English theater or to remain faithful to the immortal words of the Bard? Lisa Freinkel's production of Macbeth answers these questions with resounding indecision. Actors in odd costumes stride about on a modishly surreal set, but the performance never takes us anywhere we haven't been before.

As everyone who graduated from high school was required to know, Macbeth is a play about the evils of ambition. Three "weird sisters" prophesy to Macbeth (Mark Southern), a Scottish nobleman, that he will one day become king of Scotland. At the urging of Lady Macbeth (Alicia Rubin), the hero decides to help fate along by knocking off the current sovereign, leading to the classic meditation on paranoia, guilt, death and despair. The critical decision for the contemporary director is whether to present these and other traditional themes as best she can or to innovate, to impose new contexts and outline new meanings.

For the first 10 minutes, Freinkel's mainstage production leans toward innovation. The stage is divided: one side contains stylized broken marble pillars; while the other, raked half features a big brass bed, boulders, and a door on a checkerboard cube seemingly embedded in the Loeb floor. Presumably, the split is intended to illustrate the difference between Macbeth's public behavior in front of the pillars and his secret thoughts in his twisted bedroom. Both sides taken together, the stage looks like something Dali might have sketched on the back of a napkin.

ADD TO THIS WEIRDNESS the portrayal of the three witches (Allison Brody, Sarah Jane Cohen, and Celia M. Wren) as grade-school girls instead of old hags: their giggling and maledictions sung like nursery rhymes creates an odd but real menace. But the originality of this show gives out long before the final curtain, as it shies away from severely tampering with the conventions and gives us a typical collegiate run through the Riverside Edition.

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.

The acting of the 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."