MacSith (a blending of MacBeth and Star Wars) has just come into Chicago (running through Dec 15th with an extra performance on Dec 18th), and while the fights are as excellent as you would expect from a production placing a half-dozen fight directors in a Galaxy Far, Far Away (along with nearly thirty other performers), the real achievement of this show is highlighting the value of Family, something lost in the hocus-pocus of more ‘conventional’ MacBeth productions. Honestly, I don’t think our recent Unrehearsed production really hit this strongly either, but MacSith’s bare hour-long retelling did.
It was a simple tableau near the show’s opening that did it: MonBeth (later MacSith), MonDuff, and Banquo playing cards, each one surrounded by their wife and/or child. This simple stage picture (and I normally hate stage pictures) immediately drew my focus to Malcolm and Duncan’s relationship, which is shown right after in this production, and from there I spent the entire show looking at (and for) families.
This his hardly revolutionary, I realize. It’s been the subject of many a paper and surely something discussed by many directors to justify their horror-shows. This is just the first time I saw it so clearly. And it of course highlights a critical point of the show: Mackers does not have a child. “A barren sceptre” indeed, sir.
“Bring forth men-children only.” A compliment to his wife’s strength, or a not-so-secret longing? Witches and midwives were closely related in Elizabethan superstition, and it was the Witches who foretold (or, in many productions, created) the futures of the three most prominent men.
Also, there were light sabers. Light sabers.
Anyway, MacSith is a quick roller-coaster ride with an amazing playwright, and I was recently brought on to write a Shakespearean transliteration of the Star Wars’ “scroll” for their upcoming radio-broadcast recording. I’ll put the first one of the three below.
O Firmament Divine, this Galaxy,
This humble hive of infinite repose
And countless treachery, this land of Light,
And Dark, that each outnumbereth the other
Beyond the calculations of a Mind:
Our Galaxy, was torn by War’s Device,
And never was a tear of greater woe
Than that which forged Hatred out of Love,
And turn’d Retainers traitor, friend to Foe.
Benevolent King Duncan, Sov’reign Lord
Of Planet Cumber, was betrayed in
His battle ‘gainst the Weyen invaders
By Donwald, Moff of Cawdor, rebel Lord
Whose ships blot out the starlit sky Above,
Whilst Weyen warr’ors shake the Ground below.
Yet ‘tween these Sorrows of the Earth and Sky,
A greater, greyer treachery is birth’d
From out the pride of Victory: Mon Beth
The Lord of Glamis and highest general,
Will see his Soul contested surely as
The Planet Cumber’s sov’reign right. Betwixt
Illusions’ reign, No thing was as it seem’d.
