Thanksgiving is still a week away, but Lincoln Center Theater is already serving up a giant turkey in the form of Jack O'Brien's bloated, poorly acted and strangely conceived production of "Macbeth" starring Ethan Hawke.
An epic, then, is reduced to nothing more than a second-rate Twilight Zone–style thriller, requiring the acting to fall to match. Hawke, generally a strong, confident, and masculine actor, parades through scenes as if literally neutered, delivering all his lines with a shambling lifelessness that confirms Macbeth's status as the nonentity the script does not seem to describe. Duff fares a bit better, deploying a crisp, haughty physicality and a supple voice that carry her further than Hawke, but because the Lady is ceded no control over her husband here, her character is likewise superfluous and absent of all the alternately ambitious and pathetic qualities on which the role is usually constructed.
Scratch and claw for every day you're worth!
Make them drag you screaming from life, keep dreaming
You'll live forever here on earth.
Just painful. I adore O'Brien, as both a director and human being, but this thing is a hot mess. What in the world was he thinking? Well, no one strikes gold every time out. I do feel badly that this is Duff's introduction to NY audiences. She certainly deserves better. Some of the costumes are fabulous. What they're doing telling this particular story we'll never know. And with two spectacular Shakespeare productions running just down the Rialto a piece, just a complete embarrassment. No doubt they'll all recover, but it will take me a bit of time.
The Macbeth curse is one of those things that gets downright ridiculous.
For the young or new-to-these-parts, it is only considered bad luck to SPEAK the name inside a theater. There is no provision, even among the most superstitious, that you can never use the word in your normal life, walking down the street, or in print.