Doing justice to ‘Macbeth’

It’s rare we get to see a production of Shakespeare without traveling 90 minutes or so to Cedar City.

The Utah Shakespeare Festival travels with a selection for its Shakespeare-in-the-Schools program and we’re lucky enough to have the College of Southern Nevada host it every year, bringing students from around the valley to experience the world’s foremost and most prolific playwright.

Don’t fret, they’ll do public performances this weekend.

Each script for the tour is typically pared down from its original length. This year, we get the rarely produced tragedy, “Macbeth,” or as those in the theater like to superstitiously call it, The Scottish Play. Director Quinn Mattfield takes on what is considered one of the Bard’s darkest and most powerful plays and does it justice.

The key to good Shakespeare is to have a novice attend and understand the play. This is especially important when exposing middle and high school students who may not have had any prior opportunities. It’s that first exposure which can make one love or hate, maybe even fear, Shakespeare.

Here, Mattfield and his actors are all on top of their game. The program notes don’t give credit for the cuts, but the story stayed on track, never once jarring us into wondering how we’d come to a point in the tale so quickly. This cast of four men and three women, with the exception of the title role, play multiple parts. Everyone brings their character(s) to vivid life.

One can pretty much be as lean or as elaborate as one chooses when producing Shakespeare. For touring purposes, all production values need to be as sparse as possible because the company must handle everything themselves. Benjamin Hohman’s minimalist set consisted of a multicolored backdrop in overlapping strips, allowing the players to burst through at almost any spot, and two wagons each containing a small birch tree, all taking us from place to place. Augmented by Scott Palfreyman’s fine lighting, we were transported from scene to scene and the mood brought to bear with uncanny precision.

The men’s costumes consisted of jeans and shirts, augmented by various styles of chest armor adorned to indicate social station; the women’s simple dresses used belts of cloth or gold.

The only complaint we might have with Drew Shirley as Macbeth would be the over-wrought bellows of anger, fear, despise or mourning, which came out at the same guttural levels of volume. Any bit of subtlety and difference was tossed to the winds.

The acoustics of the Horn theater don’t do upper registers any favors, and the higher the pitch of the women’s voices the more their lines tended to get garbled and lost.

Yet, overall this is a quality production and, when the Utah Shakespeare Festival brings Willy right to our doorstep, it’s a real treat. I suggest you grab it with both hands and gobble it down.

A tragic footnote: The larger the theater community gets, the smaller it seems. Despite some rumblings it’s a pretty tight-knit, though dysfunctional family. One company’s loss is always a loss for all. In a sudden turn of events, Ed Gryska passed away on Jan. 14 while in Chicago.

CSN will be hosting a memorial in his honor on Friday from 5:30 to 7 p.m., prior to the evening’s performance.