Theater Review by Elise Nussbaum . . .
The endless elasticity of Shakespeare can be stretched to fit any variety of settings: a pre-gentrification West Side, an animated African savannah, a greasy spoon in Pennsylvania, feudal Japan. In dialogue with these far-flung adaptations are the stagings that promise to get back to basics by recreating some aspect of Shakespeare’s world, both so familiar and so alien to our modern eyes and ears. The Curtain’s Macbeth By Candlelight, now playing at Jersey City’s Nimbus Arts Center, centralizes the technical limitations of the lighting that would have been available to Shakespeare at the dawn of the 17th century, while slowly subverting its own premise.
A ring of candles (LED, not wax–historical fidelity can only take us so far) frames each scene, inviting the audience in to bear witness to a strangely intimate tale of a couple who plunge into madness and take the whole country with them. Here is an eternal twilight, reflecting the fundamental “fair is foul and foul is fair” ambiguity of the text: does Lady Macbeth push her husband into that first act of bloody madness . . . or does he jump?
This crepuscular mood lighting could get monotonous, but director Sean Hagerty begins to take advantage of modern technology as the Macbeths grow more and more unstable. Significantly, the lighting first switches up during Macbeth’s first break with reality (“Is this a dagger that I see before me?”), illuminating his face in a cool spotlight, but bathing his outstretched hand in a crimson glow. During the second half of the play, as the central couple spiral into their separate worlds, the candles reflect the increasing intensity and subjectivity of their mental states, casting an otherworldly green pall or making blood-drenched insinuations of guilt.
The candle-girded set is necessarily minimalist, making the inclusion of a black-draped bassinet a striking addition. The staging further emphasizes its importance by kicking off the play with Lady Macbeth onstage, dressed in mourning, sadly gazing into the empty vessel. “Out, out!” she cries to a servant delivering Macbeth’s news from the front, calling forward both to her “damned spot” and her husband’s “brief candle.” The freshness of this loss informs both their character arcs, from her immediate brutal nihilism to his fury at the “fruitless crown” and “barren scepter” handed to him by the weird sisters, as well as a shocking act of onstage violence he commits late in the play.
In a cast of solid performances, Jamie Ballard, as Macbeth, and Christianna Nelson, as Lady Macbeth, completely dominate. A veteran of the London stage, Ballard plays Macbeth with a fair amount of wit, even as he commits murder after murder, reasoning that when one is in the middle of a bloody morass, the only way out is through. Through the final scene, we sense that spark of intelligence, bravery, and self-assertion that have been perverted into arrogance and power-hungry bloodlust. Nelson conveys a woman still reeling from emotional trauma but capable of deep connection with her husband, before giving up on managing his guilt-plagued hallucinations and retreating into a largely offstage world of her own.
Shakespeare’s Weird Sisters, written to cater to the occult fascinations of England’s newly crowned (at the writing of Macbeth) King James I, are somewhat de-emphasized here, evicted from the first moments of the play to make way for that haunting bassinet. But Emma Kantor, Priyanka Kedia, and Gilda Mercado make up for those lost moments, playing the witches as deranged waifs clutching broken dolls and chanting in singsong. Suitably unnerving, they reassert themselves in the play’s final moments, as the brief candles flicker out.
Macbeth by Candlelight. Through November 3 at Nimbus Arts Center (329 Warren Street, Jersey City, NJ). Two hours, 30 minutes with one intermission. www.thecurtain.org
Photos: Will O’Hare Photography
