Alan Cumming's one-man production of Macbeth lands on Broadway. The National Theatre of Scotland's production of MACBETH was performed last summer at the Lincoln Center Festival. Tony Award-winning actor Alan Cumming's virtuoso performance is a bold reimagining of Shakespeare's chilling tale of desire, ambition, and the supernatural.
The production is set in a psychiatric unit and centers on a patient who is reliving the story of Macbeth. CCTV cameras watch the patient's every move and the clinical walls of the unit come to life in a visually stunning multi-media theatrical experience.
Alan Cumming plays a man possessed by every character in 'Macbeth.' In a sad, emotionally draining and bravura perf, he makes it seem as if every psychosis and hallucination in the play is an expression of one man's fragile state of mind...It's an interpretation that throws a very particular light on 'Macbeth' at the expense of the play's political and social qualities, yet such are Cumming's gifts as an actor, we also get an uncommonly rich reading of the play. Using the most subtle shifts in register, gait and dress, he switches seamlessly from character to character...Tiffany and Goldberg give Cumming the run of the stage, yet are not afraid to slow the production down to give us time to take stock.
The economy and cleverness of the staging is no less than you might expect from Tiffany especially, whose direction in both downtown and uptown modes (Black Watch at St. Ann's; Once on Broadway) displays an uncommon facility with big but delicate gestures. Every element of the design-set, sound, costume, video, lighting-is ideally tailored to the concept. And Cumming is more disciplined than you might imagine; his delicious sense of camp is confined to the appropriate characterizations, and his voice for verse, with those big Scots vowels, is outstanding. He's tireless and brave in enacting a difficult story.
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