Macbeth, Barack Obama and weird staging
Last night I went to the opening night of "Macbeth" - the Verdi opera - at SF Opera. Review/ramblings under the cut.... it's long. I apologize.
By the way, if you correctly guess the song I'm referencing, you get a prize.
I bought two tickets because I don't like to go to performances by myself - particularly if I'm going to be surrounded by older, whiter people than myself. After asking several friends and getting negatives - including a last second decline the day of, I ended up going with my dad.
Performance starts at 7:30. When we went to Appomatox we left at about 6:45 and got a parking space in the Performing Arts Garage with no problem. So, we thought - should be no problem right? Wrong. We get to the Performing Arts Garage - and it's full. The garage is pretty huge and Dad's already annoyed. He drove his 'baby', the BMW. He's not parking it in some outdoor valet place - particularly not one that costs $20.
I suggest the underground parking lot, under the park. That lot is also full. Dad is getting super annoyed at this point. There are cars everywhere and they're all honking at each other. There are bikes everywhere and some of the idiots riding them don't have reflectors or lights... possibly no helmets either (some of them). There are a huge number of cops as well... mostly focused around Bill Graham Civic Auditorium.
I manage to get a look at the marquee - Barack Obama is in town. That explains the huge crowd of people outside Bill Graham and the general mess of things.
We find a little outdoor lot that's $15 and isn't valet - you don't have to leave your key. Dad is pleased. The purveyor is a nice Asian Indian man and we briefly joke with him before heading to the opera house.
I forgot which side is even and which odd, so we end up on the wrong side at first. Oops. We end up next to one of my classmates and his date. We sit down as they start ringing the 'almost curtain' bell. I manage to get a glance at the program - this will not be a literal staging at all.
So I'm bracing myself for the weird when the curtain raises...
Verdi made the Witches and the Murderers into choruses instead of trios. I blink rapidly as I realize that, yes the women playing the witches are all dressed in contemporary clothing... all in the brightest pink highlighter shade. (Ok, not all quite that color but most). All of them also have some sort of absurd prop - a 20s style cigarette holder, a hula hoop, nail polish, blowing bubbles.
The singing is lovely - SF Opera has a really good chorus. However, I am still getting over the idea that the Witches are all dressed in pink and look like strange stereotypes of femininity (which is especially strange since the witches are described as looking like women but with beards). The one with the hula hoops is wearing a tank top, jeans and has a little backpack shaped like a stop sign. There's one who's dressed a bit like Marilyn Monroe in "Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend".
The stage has a large cube on the right side (stage left side). However, it is mostly bare. The walls are gray. Something covers the ceiling and has a giant hole in it, a bit like a gaping mouth. One of the panels on the left side opens to be a door. The very front of the stage is covered in a kind of grass.
Banquo and Macbeth arrive. They look like neo-Fascists in their military uniforms. Their helmets are crosses between those worn by police officers in riot gear and those worn by professional football players... with a bigger grill over the face.
The witches face upstage while ostensibly singing to Banquo and Macbeth. The sound was not terrible but I was in the second row. I hate to imagine what it was like for the back of the house. Moreover Banquo and Macbeth did not talk to the witches but to three strange dancers. These people were covered in what appeared to be newspaper and were dressed a little bit like mummies. When the witches made their predictions, one ripped off a paper and handed it to Macbeth, and then ripped off another and handed it to Banquo.
More soldiers arrive - Macbeth is now Thane of Cawdor. The soldiers at least are dressed like Banquo and Macbeth in neo-Fascist gear with the creepy helmets.
Set change! Some of the witches had chairs and bring them back out and sit down stage right. Almost like they're watching something on TV. The giant cube is turned around. Macbeth sits in the cube, writing a letter to Lady Macbeth. Lady Macbeth is on top of the cube. She wears a black dress with some buckles that echo the Neo-Fascist look. She is also chained to the box around the waist. Her aria was good.
Macbeth comes out and tells her about Duncan, etc. He is at the bottom of the box, she at the top. I start to wonder if she's going to be on the box the entire time and what that could mean. It doesn't matter. After that scene, a stage hand runs up and unchains her.
The curtain is still lowered when Duncan arrives. Some of his aides are dressed a bit like stereotypical Arabian/Middle Eastern people. Macbeth and Banquo are now wearing these strange long pseudo-military jackets. Duncan's bedroom is now the cube.
The curtain rises again. The murder scene takes place. I miss the Porter. Lady Macbeth splashes water in her husband's face (the program notes indicate that this should be green slime. What the hell?) A black curtain gets pulled over the side of the stage and the top of the stage.
Big chorus scene where everyone is calling for vengeance - including Macbeth and Lady Macbeth though they're a bit troubled by it still. Black curtains retract.
End Act 1. Now, most everyone expected an intermission but the lights don't go all the way up and people start shifting and stretching before realizing that there's not going to be an intermission at this point. Macbeth, the opera, is in four acts and the middle two are fairly short. I think most people expected there to be two intermissions, one after the first act, and one after the third. After some confusion and the conductor standing, looking at the audience, everyone sat back down.
Act 2.
The chorus of Murderers (well of First and Second Murderers and Third Murderers) was... interesting. They are wearing backwards baseball caps with... what resembles police riot gear. the First/Second Murderers are wearing orange on the shoulders (like DS9/Voyager uniforms). The Third Murderers are wearing yellow. Three of the murderers change from those outfits to women's clothes... skirt, top, and heels on stage. They are given flowers and wigs... I suppose to throw off Banquo and his son.
For the murder scene of Banquo and his son... Banquo is wearing the ugliest sweater vest looking thing and it has weird gold threads and doesn't match with anything else. The son is played by a small child... and wears the equivalent of pjs. They are supposed to be going to Macbeth's banquet but they're putting up "Missing" posters (for the King's son, Malcolm??) Banquo's son also puts out a bright green typewriter on the grassy area. Banquo gets whacked over the head with the flowers and dies.
Macbeth and Lady Macbeth were wearing the ugliest fur robes (bright yellow and orange) at the banquet. They were also acting like drunken idiots. Lady Macbeth poured wine all over someone's hand and all over the table and laughed during her toast song. I really liked this because it just emphasized how much everyone was getting annoyed with them.
The 'table' was long, metal and had wheels. The top was covered with long white sheets, obscuring something lumpy underneath.
Finally, Macbeth sees the ghost... but the audience doesn't see the ghost either. We see stage hands pulling the tablecloths off to reveal... dirt. The crowd of lords and ladies get a copy of the same missing poster and seem to understand that that means Banquo and his son are dead or missing at least. Everyone leaves and the witches are supposed to come out and try the feast... which in this case, means nibbling on and pretending to eat dirt.
Finally we get our intermission. Wander around a bit... then go back inside.
Act 3.
The witches are making their brew by pulling their props (the stop sign backpack, etc.) out of the dirt in the tables. There are also the three dancers buried in there (or possibly mechanical versions of them). Two of them spring up to sit up, startling the witches.
Macbeth arrives... wearing what looks like black pajamas. One of the 'visions' is one of the witches having a seizure and then speaking. The other two walk in. The last vision - of crowned children, who are Banquo's... was also strange. Small children walked around with plastic shields covering their faces, gold crowns and branches. They each, seemingly at random dropped their branches on the stage.
As the witches do their spell, words were projected all over the stage - nonsensical Italian. The effect was cool though.
Macbeth passes out. The witches try to revive him (a few try to dance with him, which is amusing since the actor does a fairly good job of being very limp but not falling onto someone). The witches leave. The stage is a mess of branches and the witches props... I start to feel bad for the stage hands. The witches come back for their props.
Lady Macbeth arrives.... wearing one of those long jackets that Macbeth and Banquo were wearing earlier. They decide to kill Macduff.
Act 4.
The men's chorus comes out in camo jackets and pants. Some wear hats that are reminiscent of those that (stereotypically) prisoners wear. The witches are given black coverings for their heads and camo jackets.
Then Macduff sang about his family. The cube opens to reveal a woman and five or six kids, some of whom are covering their eyes or covering others eyes.
Macduff and Malcolm declare their attack on the castle.
Cut to Lady Macbeth's servant and the doctor. The doctor looked... like a doctor - white lab coat, briefcase. The servant... is wearing a black vest that looks like something a guerrilla soldier would wear.
Lady Macbeth is behind glass in the cube. She plays with the candle and eventually the glass door opens. She writes some more of that nonsensical Italian on the glass door with a red dry erase marker and then smears it on her hand... and her white dress. Very nice imagery.
Macbeth discovers that his wife is dead - in the back of the cube. I'm forgetting how, but he ends up in the cube during the battle. Small children wearing white dresses with green patterns ran around the cube and inside the cube with branches.
Finally Macduff shows up and he stabs the side of the cube, three times with three different swords killing Macbeth.
Last happy song. Malcolm is king, everyone is happy. Banquo's son appears... the green typewriter is back on the stage. He picks up the crown that was left on the floor after everyone else left... and some large red pointer thing descends from the hole in the ceiling and points at him.
Overall: the cube was unwieldy. It took such a long time to move once, I could feel my eyes glazing over. Also, the stage hands were given such strange outfits I watched them more than the actors. Never a good sign.
The singing was quite good. Banquo wasn't quite as strong but Macbeth and Lady Macbeth were quite good. Macbeth got some standing ovations.
The costuming was damn weird. I could make no sense of that, particularly the ugly sweater vest.
The staging was interesting but also damn weird - intended to be but I still didn't get it.
The director and music director (I think?) came out for bows at the end, after all the cast and the conductor. They got some boos.
By the way, if you correctly guess the song I'm referencing, you get a prize.
I bought two tickets because I don't like to go to performances by myself - particularly if I'm going to be surrounded by older, whiter people than myself. After asking several friends and getting negatives - including a last second decline the day of, I ended up going with my dad.
Performance starts at 7:30. When we went to Appomatox we left at about 6:45 and got a parking space in the Performing Arts Garage with no problem. So, we thought - should be no problem right? Wrong. We get to the Performing Arts Garage - and it's full. The garage is pretty huge and Dad's already annoyed. He drove his 'baby', the BMW. He's not parking it in some outdoor valet place - particularly not one that costs $20.
I suggest the underground parking lot, under the park. That lot is also full. Dad is getting super annoyed at this point. There are cars everywhere and they're all honking at each other. There are bikes everywhere and some of the idiots riding them don't have reflectors or lights... possibly no helmets either (some of them). There are a huge number of cops as well... mostly focused around Bill Graham Civic Auditorium.
I manage to get a look at the marquee - Barack Obama is in town. That explains the huge crowd of people outside Bill Graham and the general mess of things.
We find a little outdoor lot that's $15 and isn't valet - you don't have to leave your key. Dad is pleased. The purveyor is a nice Asian Indian man and we briefly joke with him before heading to the opera house.
I forgot which side is even and which odd, so we end up on the wrong side at first. Oops. We end up next to one of my classmates and his date. We sit down as they start ringing the 'almost curtain' bell. I manage to get a glance at the program - this will not be a literal staging at all.
So I'm bracing myself for the weird when the curtain raises...
Verdi made the Witches and the Murderers into choruses instead of trios. I blink rapidly as I realize that, yes the women playing the witches are all dressed in contemporary clothing... all in the brightest pink highlighter shade. (Ok, not all quite that color but most). All of them also have some sort of absurd prop - a 20s style cigarette holder, a hula hoop, nail polish, blowing bubbles.
The singing is lovely - SF Opera has a really good chorus. However, I am still getting over the idea that the Witches are all dressed in pink and look like strange stereotypes of femininity (which is especially strange since the witches are described as looking like women but with beards). The one with the hula hoops is wearing a tank top, jeans and has a little backpack shaped like a stop sign. There's one who's dressed a bit like Marilyn Monroe in "Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend".
The stage has a large cube on the right side (stage left side). However, it is mostly bare. The walls are gray. Something covers the ceiling and has a giant hole in it, a bit like a gaping mouth. One of the panels on the left side opens to be a door. The very front of the stage is covered in a kind of grass.
Banquo and Macbeth arrive. They look like neo-Fascists in their military uniforms. Their helmets are crosses between those worn by police officers in riot gear and those worn by professional football players... with a bigger grill over the face.
The witches face upstage while ostensibly singing to Banquo and Macbeth. The sound was not terrible but I was in the second row. I hate to imagine what it was like for the back of the house. Moreover Banquo and Macbeth did not talk to the witches but to three strange dancers. These people were covered in what appeared to be newspaper and were dressed a little bit like mummies. When the witches made their predictions, one ripped off a paper and handed it to Macbeth, and then ripped off another and handed it to Banquo.
More soldiers arrive - Macbeth is now Thane of Cawdor. The soldiers at least are dressed like Banquo and Macbeth in neo-Fascist gear with the creepy helmets.
Set change! Some of the witches had chairs and bring them back out and sit down stage right. Almost like they're watching something on TV. The giant cube is turned around. Macbeth sits in the cube, writing a letter to Lady Macbeth. Lady Macbeth is on top of the cube. She wears a black dress with some buckles that echo the Neo-Fascist look. She is also chained to the box around the waist. Her aria was good.
Macbeth comes out and tells her about Duncan, etc. He is at the bottom of the box, she at the top. I start to wonder if she's going to be on the box the entire time and what that could mean. It doesn't matter. After that scene, a stage hand runs up and unchains her.
The curtain is still lowered when Duncan arrives. Some of his aides are dressed a bit like stereotypical Arabian/Middle Eastern people. Macbeth and Banquo are now wearing these strange long pseudo-military jackets. Duncan's bedroom is now the cube.
The curtain rises again. The murder scene takes place. I miss the Porter. Lady Macbeth splashes water in her husband's face (the program notes indicate that this should be green slime. What the hell?) A black curtain gets pulled over the side of the stage and the top of the stage.
Big chorus scene where everyone is calling for vengeance - including Macbeth and Lady Macbeth though they're a bit troubled by it still. Black curtains retract.
End Act 1. Now, most everyone expected an intermission but the lights don't go all the way up and people start shifting and stretching before realizing that there's not going to be an intermission at this point. Macbeth, the opera, is in four acts and the middle two are fairly short. I think most people expected there to be two intermissions, one after the first act, and one after the third. After some confusion and the conductor standing, looking at the audience, everyone sat back down.
Act 2.
The chorus of Murderers (well of First and Second Murderers and Third Murderers) was... interesting. They are wearing backwards baseball caps with... what resembles police riot gear. the First/Second Murderers are wearing orange on the shoulders (like DS9/Voyager uniforms). The Third Murderers are wearing yellow. Three of the murderers change from those outfits to women's clothes... skirt, top, and heels on stage. They are given flowers and wigs... I suppose to throw off Banquo and his son.
For the murder scene of Banquo and his son... Banquo is wearing the ugliest sweater vest looking thing and it has weird gold threads and doesn't match with anything else. The son is played by a small child... and wears the equivalent of pjs. They are supposed to be going to Macbeth's banquet but they're putting up "Missing" posters (for the King's son, Malcolm??) Banquo's son also puts out a bright green typewriter on the grassy area. Banquo gets whacked over the head with the flowers and dies.
Macbeth and Lady Macbeth were wearing the ugliest fur robes (bright yellow and orange) at the banquet. They were also acting like drunken idiots. Lady Macbeth poured wine all over someone's hand and all over the table and laughed during her toast song. I really liked this because it just emphasized how much everyone was getting annoyed with them.
The 'table' was long, metal and had wheels. The top was covered with long white sheets, obscuring something lumpy underneath.
Finally, Macbeth sees the ghost... but the audience doesn't see the ghost either. We see stage hands pulling the tablecloths off to reveal... dirt. The crowd of lords and ladies get a copy of the same missing poster and seem to understand that that means Banquo and his son are dead or missing at least. Everyone leaves and the witches are supposed to come out and try the feast... which in this case, means nibbling on and pretending to eat dirt.
Finally we get our intermission. Wander around a bit... then go back inside.
Act 3.
The witches are making their brew by pulling their props (the stop sign backpack, etc.) out of the dirt in the tables. There are also the three dancers buried in there (or possibly mechanical versions of them). Two of them spring up to sit up, startling the witches.
Macbeth arrives... wearing what looks like black pajamas. One of the 'visions' is one of the witches having a seizure and then speaking. The other two walk in. The last vision - of crowned children, who are Banquo's... was also strange. Small children walked around with plastic shields covering their faces, gold crowns and branches. They each, seemingly at random dropped their branches on the stage.
As the witches do their spell, words were projected all over the stage - nonsensical Italian. The effect was cool though.
Macbeth passes out. The witches try to revive him (a few try to dance with him, which is amusing since the actor does a fairly good job of being very limp but not falling onto someone). The witches leave. The stage is a mess of branches and the witches props... I start to feel bad for the stage hands. The witches come back for their props.
Lady Macbeth arrives.... wearing one of those long jackets that Macbeth and Banquo were wearing earlier. They decide to kill Macduff.
Act 4.
The men's chorus comes out in camo jackets and pants. Some wear hats that are reminiscent of those that (stereotypically) prisoners wear. The witches are given black coverings for their heads and camo jackets.
Then Macduff sang about his family. The cube opens to reveal a woman and five or six kids, some of whom are covering their eyes or covering others eyes.
Macduff and Malcolm declare their attack on the castle.
Cut to Lady Macbeth's servant and the doctor. The doctor looked... like a doctor - white lab coat, briefcase. The servant... is wearing a black vest that looks like something a guerrilla soldier would wear.
Lady Macbeth is behind glass in the cube. She plays with the candle and eventually the glass door opens. She writes some more of that nonsensical Italian on the glass door with a red dry erase marker and then smears it on her hand... and her white dress. Very nice imagery.
Macbeth discovers that his wife is dead - in the back of the cube. I'm forgetting how, but he ends up in the cube during the battle. Small children wearing white dresses with green patterns ran around the cube and inside the cube with branches.
Finally Macduff shows up and he stabs the side of the cube, three times with three different swords killing Macbeth.
Last happy song. Malcolm is king, everyone is happy. Banquo's son appears... the green typewriter is back on the stage. He picks up the crown that was left on the floor after everyone else left... and some large red pointer thing descends from the hole in the ceiling and points at him.
Overall: the cube was unwieldy. It took such a long time to move once, I could feel my eyes glazing over. Also, the stage hands were given such strange outfits I watched them more than the actors. Never a good sign.
The singing was quite good. Banquo wasn't quite as strong but Macbeth and Lady Macbeth were quite good. Macbeth got some standing ovations.
The costuming was damn weird. I could make no sense of that, particularly the ugly sweater vest.
The staging was interesting but also damn weird - intended to be but I still didn't get it.
The director and music director (I think?) came out for bows at the end, after all the cast and the conductor. They got some boos.