From the 2002 Actors Theatre of Louisville production of MACBETH. Mark Mineart as Macbeth. Kim Martin-Cotten as Lady Macbeth. More photos of MACBETH can be found here.
From the 2002 Actors Theatre of Louisville production of MACBETH. Mark Mineart
as Macbeth. Kim Martin-Cotten as Lady Macbeth. More photos of MACBETH can
be found here.
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Masterson, O'Hearn makes Louisville's 'Macbeth' memorable
"If the prospect of a multimedia production of William Shakespeare produces the same sort of wariness as the arrival of a letter from the IRS, you are not alone. Many feel Shakespeare's plays should have a "Do Not Tamper with Contents" label permanently and prominently attached.
Masterson's production also employs a trio of performers who bring the full power of the play's emotions and drama to very contemporary staging flavored with elements of Japanese Kabuki drama. Dressed in cream-colored costumes reminiscent of traditional samurai warriors, they don masks, trade roles and turn a square steel-grid platform backed by white screens into the multiple locales of this Scottish tale.
It's a performance where timeless ritual, medieval ceremony and eternal human desires blend with contemporary elements, projections of live and recorded images, electronic and digital wizardry that stretches, deepens, recycles and echoes voices and other sounds.
Fog seeps through cracks. Thoughts become images that float through golden light. The wind moans. Spiders and scorpions slide past in the background. Daggers appear shining in murderous hands.
These are not splashy electronic tricks laid on just for show.
O'Hearn's sets, Darron L. West's sound designs, Tony Penna's lighting designs and videographer Valerie Sullivan Fuchs' carefully conceived images bring a new and definite clarity to this 400-year-old play. Undulating images flow, seep and stream across the screens, echoing Macbeth's free-flowing, changeable morals. Murderers appear as red eyes on a black background as silhouetted figures carry out their deeds. Banquo's bloodied image materializes on Macbeth's banquet chair. Death comes in a blur of white noise and electronic snow.
All this technical wizardry is done in service and support to Shakespeare's text. The adaptation compacts some characters into composites, and Masterson has made some excisions, but they are barely perceptible.
This is one of the cleanest, clearest, most riveting productions of "Macbeth" you're likely to encounter. Masterson and his three very fine actors never abandon their primary mission of telling their story with passion, crisp diction and clearly delineated characterization.
Mineart's imposingly powerful Macbeth willingly places himself in fate's hands, believing it will convey him on to glory. You can feel the passionate ambition of Martin-Cotten's Lady Macbeth as she urges her husband to screw his courage to the sticking place. He reacts with uncomprehending denial when the electronically imaged green trees of Burnham Woods pulse ever larger as they advance toward him. Conversely, electronic manipulation shrinks his towering frame to portray Macduff's young son with aching vulnerability.
From its first flitting and flickering glimpses of the witches, to the final image of Macbeth's severed and blood-soaked head, this is a "Macbeth" that deserves a wider audience.
Masterson says that one European theater festival has expressed interest in presenting it, but finances make that unlikely. For the moment, that means that for those who like their Shakespeare, both classic and cutting-edge, the place to be is Actors Theatre of Louisville."
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Multimedia Macbeth
Beetles and bats, serpents and scorpions, owls and falcons all come to life in a mesmerising new stage production of Macbeth. "What we're doing is unique in that it's a real dance," says Mark Mineart, who plays Macbeth and half a dozen minor roles. "The technology is like another character in the play."
Read the rest of the article and see more Macbeth photos here.
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3 Actors make 'Macbeth' cutting edge.
"How can you stage William Shakespeare's "Macbeth," which has nearly 40 characters, with only three actors?
With masks, video imagery and actors with a prodigious ability to articulate Shakespeare's words while performing multiple roles.
As Macbeth, Mark Mineart forcefully portrays a man whose ambition turns into a willingness to murder and then grows cancer-like until he becomes a seething tyrant with cringing servants. When last we saw Mineart, he was being chopped into pieces in Jane Martin's "Flaming Guns of the Purple Sage." With Macbeth, he proves he can do much more than snarl. Besides Macbeth, Mineart performs six other minor roles.
My guess is that high school students will like this 'Macbeth" far better than an older crowd. Anyone who liked Baz Luhrmann's movie version of "Romeo and Juliet" or "Hamlet" with Ethan Hawke as a New York techno-freak will be turned on by this multi-sensory, cutting-edge production."
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High-tech 'Macbeth' mesmerizes
"There's an innovative and daring version of Macbeth on the boards at Actors Theatre of Louisville through the end of this month. This is Macbeth transported into a new realm, a world of shimmering light, multi-media accents and stylized movement. This is Macbeth as a Rorschach test. At times the kaleidoscope images don't fit; at times the show loses momentum.
But throughout, this Macbeth is mesmerizing.
The other major innovation is that three actors cover the 32 roles needed to bring this story of ambition and villany to its inexorable close. The actors (Kim Martin-Cotten, Will Bond and Mark Mineart) go through their character changes at platforms on either side of the stage, donning the appropriate helmet or mask or striking the appropriate pose in full view of the audience.
One might expect all of this...razzle-dazzle to blast the Bard's meaty text to smithereens. But it doesn't. The actors serve up all the familiar monologues with intense clarity. Mineart is a wonderfully despicable Macbeth.
The result is both allegorical and chilling...the words and sounds and images continue to haunt long after the lights come down."
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