#1
Posted: 4/8/08 at 7:06pm
Talkin' Broadway is Mixed:
Never... have I encountered a more completely considered Lady Macbeth less influential than Fleetwood's. She's a steely marvel when finishing the scene-setting of her husband's first killing he's too terrified to manage, but otherwise a non-entity who only vaguely magnifies his latent inclinations rather than inspiring them to flight. Gorgeous, crisply intelligent, and looking a half to a third of Macbeth's age, she fits flawlessly into the overriding concept of unlikely dreams coming true. (Hers, seemingly her birthright, being to become queen.) But Fleetwood earns neither pride of place nor the classic, hand-scrubbing mad scene that should typify the deepest dangers of unchecked aspirations.
Stewart makes that journey alone, and it's one that alternately rivets and terrifies as his Macbeth becomes more corrupting and corruptible. The glee he displays ordering a slaughter while fixing a sandwich, his ruthlessness carrying on a life-or-death sotto voce discussion during his dinner party, and his triumph in slaying a warrior he knows cannot be his own downfall identify a man who's yet come to terms with the new influence he wields.
When it's time for him to answer for his crimes, Macbeth faces it the way he faces everything: like a man. But though Stewart renders this supposedly indestructible figure a slave to immortality, this metamorphosis does not come as a surprise. His Macbeth is never more or less than a man; a tyrant, yes, but a pitiable one who's only ever longed to be more than he is. At portraying this, Stewart unquestionably succeeds, while the rest of this Macbeth more visibly boils in the toil and trouble of finding itself.
http://www.talkinbroadway.com/world/Macbeth2008.html
Never... have I encountered a more completely considered Lady Macbeth less influential than Fleetwood's. She's a steely marvel when finishing the scene-setting of her husband's first killing he's too terrified to manage, but otherwise a non-entity who only vaguely magnifies his latent inclinations rather than inspiring them to flight. Gorgeous, crisply intelligent, and looking a half to a third of Macbeth's age, she fits flawlessly into the overriding concept of unlikely dreams coming true. (Hers, seemingly her birthright, being to become queen.) But Fleetwood earns neither pride of place nor the classic, hand-scrubbing mad scene that should typify the deepest dangers of unchecked aspirations.
Stewart makes that journey alone, and it's one that alternately rivets and terrifies as his Macbeth becomes more corrupting and corruptible. The glee he displays ordering a slaughter while fixing a sandwich, his ruthlessness carrying on a life-or-death sotto voce discussion during his dinner party, and his triumph in slaying a warrior he knows cannot be his own downfall identify a man who's yet come to terms with the new influence he wields.
When it's time for him to answer for his crimes, Macbeth faces it the way he faces everything: like a man. But though Stewart renders this supposedly indestructible figure a slave to immortality, this metamorphosis does not come as a surprise. His Macbeth is never more or less than a man; a tyrant, yes, but a pitiable one who's only ever longed to be more than he is. At portraying this, Stewart unquestionably succeeds, while the rest of this Macbeth more visibly boils in the toil and trouble of finding itself.
http://www.talkinbroadway.com/world/Macbeth2008.html
"Y'know, I think Bertolt Brecht was rolling in his grave."
-Nellie McKay on the 2006 Broadway production of The Threepenny Opera, in which she played Polly Peachum
-Nellie McKay on the 2006 Broadway production of The Threepenny Opera, in which she played Polly Peachum
