Double Toil and Trouble – Westmont Theater’s ‘Macbeth’ is a speedy trip into madness

If you’re tired already of the holiday spirit, then how about some murder, revenge, madness and bloodshed, where the only spirit is a manifestation of your guilt? Westmont’s production of “Macbeth,” whose only spirit is the manifestation of guilt, should satisfy.

Performed with a five-woman cast, this “Macbeth” strips an already speedy play — one of Shakespeare’s shortest — down to 45 or 50 minutes.

“Macbeth is already action-packed and intense,” says Mitchell Thomas, a Westmont instructor and the play’s director. “But when you take out some of the speeches, it becomes especially fast-paced.”

The play is coming out of an advanced acting course at Westmont focusing on Shakespeare. It’s also a hybrid production, a show in the traditional sense, but also a class project that, according to Thomas, has informed many of the choices that he has made.

“I wanted the actors to spend some really good time with the text,” he says.

Some Westmont theater students, despite their love of Shakespeare, weren’t familiar with the play at first.

“It’s great material, of course,” Thomas says. “But it does require working with what I call a heightened text, where the structure is just as important as the content. And that’s a challenge for a young actor, to get to a level where they can enter into the size of the images Shakespeare requires. It’s huge stakes in ‘Macbeth.’ What does it mean to take in the prospect of killing a king? That’s a leap for anyone, especially Americans, and to see that the king has a direct line to God.”

But make that leap, the actors do. The five women all play King Macbeth, they all play Lady Macbeth and they all play the weird sisters. The choice of women was practical for one thing — there are great female actors in the department right now — but anyone familiar with the genre-bending and tradition-busting style of Westmont’s theater department knows the frisson that an all-female cast can bring.

“It was neutralizing, or at least relegating, gender to the background, and looking more at the nature of these people. I hope by breaking down the traditional roles and having the roles rotate, we stop associating Macbeth or Lady Macbeth with one person, but that it becomes a more universal experience,” Thomas says.

“There is potential for good and evil in everyone, and this being a tragedy, we see the results of following the latter potential.”

Five women playing the roles isn’t revolutionary. It’s just an inverse of Shakespeare’s time, when only men were allowed onstage. The audience will be onstage within inches of the actors, resulting in a very intimate show.

“It’s trying to get an audience to not just watch a play, but also having the play act on their central nervous system,” he says. “Being inches away from a person requires a more realistic or authentic experience for the character. At the same time, the images, the size of the language, along with the stakes for each character, are massive and unnatural. So to try to negotiate those two requirements is a big challenge.”

Also, says Thomas, sharing the roles undoes any hierarchy within the group over who plays what. Instead, only fun remains.

“That was surprising,” Thomas says. “Maybe it is because of the dark subject matter, but fun and joy keeps us sane.”

‘MACBETH’
When: 8 p.m. tonight and Saturday
Where: Porter Theatre, Westmont College, 955 La Paz Road
Cost: Free
Information: (805) 565-7040, westmont.edu