SITI company’s unique take on the Bard runs at DTW through October 16
Dance Theater Workshop
219 West 19th St. between Seventh & Eighth Aves.
Through October 16, $35, 7:00 (both shows $50 on Friday and Saturday nights)
212-924-0077
www.dtw.org
www.siti.org
Using Orson Welles’s edited radio script of MACBETH, directors Anne Bogart and Darron L West lead SITI Company on an eerie but engaging retelling of one of the Bard’s most haunted works. On a relatively sparse stage, a group of actors gather to rehearse a radio production of MACBETH. The performers and the chairs and tables move about as the troupe recites this abbreviated tale of Macbeth’s treacherous rise to power in Scotland. Not a word is spoken that is not from the original Shakespeare text, but as the familiar story unfolds, Bogart and West reveal aspects of the performers’ characters and relationships, creating a play within the play. Tension builds as Will Bond (Duncan, Macduff, Murderer, Doctor) expresses his displeasure that his wife (Ellen Lauren as Lady Macbeth) and the company lead (Stephen Duff Webber as Macbeth and Orson Welles) carry on an affair in full view of everyone. Things are continually going bump in the night as ladders fall and the Witch (Kelly Maurer) loudly bangs on a table with a piece of wood, bringing to the foreground the kind of sound effects used in radio’s heyday.
Bogart, SITI’s artistic director, and West, an award-winning sound designer, include inventive visual stimuli so it is not just a bunch of people sitting around reading from a script; at one point, the players line up chairs in the middle of the stage, and the actors sit down to depict the chain of succession leading to Macbeth’s becoming king. RADIO MACBETH runs through October 16 at Dance Theater Workshop, but as an added treat, the company will also present WAR OF THE WORLDS — THE RADIO PLAY, SITI’s unique staging of Welles’s classic 1938 broadcast, as part of a double feature on Friday and Saturday nights. The two shows have never been performed together; by putting them back-to-back, Bogart and West reveal how they developed RADIO MACBETH: It is as if the MACBETH rehearsal actually takes place immediately following the troupe’s on-air production of Howard Koch’s adaptation of the H. G. Welles thriller, adding more depth to the characters and also explaining why they seem so exhausted when they first take the stage in RADIO MACBETH.