By Levi Wright
Dresses hung in the open-aired amphitheater as a light hum of music played alongside the whistling birds. It felt ghostly as the dresses blew in the wind and the violin played, setting the tone before Macbeth even began.
“It is creepy as hell,” said Sean Lewis, the director of Macbeth and artistic director of Riverside Theater. “The park at night becomes a different place. You throw lights on it and about 30 swirling and floating dresses, and you’re in a different world. It’s a world that is swirling in chaos and soliciting dark help. It’s a really fun experience to sit there amid all that and see a play this old be done in a new way once again.”
The Shakespeare play is part of a yearly summer series put on by Riverside, usually in Lower City Park.
At this June 10 night show, time drew near and the sun retreated for the day, the shadows grew longer, and the stage became more dramatic.
“This is a fantastic show to do outside — we start each evening in the bright sunshine, and as the story gets darker, so does our limitless theater,” said Kevin Moore, the fight choreographer and Malcolm in the play. “The sounds around us shift from evening bird song to the frogs and things that creep as night settles in. Our show is a lot about the darkness of oppression and the damage that it does to the people living in it.”
The crowd waited in anticipation; spectators flipped through the program handed out at the entrance, showcasing the theater company’s past, present, and future plays. One of the actors rushed the stage sword drawn, interrupting the crowd to demand phones be turned off and no pictures be taken.
The hard work that was put into the play was evident as the play began with a creaking door, breaking the silence. The slow opening drew the crowd’s attention.
The play began to get more dramatic and action occurred across the stage. Watching the actors react to each other while reciting lines was just as enthralling as the lines themselves.
“Macbeth isn’t just some mustache-twirling bad guy; he’s complex,” Moore said. “He’s doing terrible things, and he’s full of doubts and tormented by the things he’s done, by whether he should do them in the first place. He’s duped into believing Fate has taken him by the hand — and in a way, it has, just not the ways he thinks. He’s a war hero who got in too deep and can’t undo what he’s done, so he keeps pushing through.”
Macbeth started June 9 and will continue through June 18. Then for the rest of June and into July, Riverside will put on a production of The Bomb-itty of Errors, a contemporary take on Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors.
Although Macbeth is the main character, characters followed their own motives, having their own stories that add different dynamics to the play, leaving the audience watching until the end.
“[Macbeth is] ultimately a love story,” said Patrick DuLaney, the actor playing Macbeth. “We’ve all done something we shouldn’t for love; Macbeth just takes it to epic heights.”
