On Tuesday, Mer and I (and four other chaperons) headed out with 150 seniors and juniors to go the short distance to Actors’ Summit theater to see Macbeth. We filled the theater; it was nice to have just our kids in the theater. The production went a little over two hours, and the students did very well, all in all. A few of them started whispering the “If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well it were done quickly” speech that they had memorized, but a quick glance from teachers cut that short. They also started getting a little restless in the last 15 minutes or so (including one girl next to me who had the giggles through much of the ending sword fights), but on the whole the kids did really well. They did laugh quite a bit at seeing Macbeth’s head on a pike at the end of the play (the head was clearly fake), but I can’t blame them for that – it takes going to theater for awhile to get used to scenery and props being suggestive instead of photorealistic.

As for the play, it was excellent. The set was simple, but effective – there were two sets of curved stairs on either side of the stage. Actors could enter or exit at the top of the stairs or go under them. This allowed for the witches to disappear under the earth, or for Lady Macbeth to be seated on a dais/throne. It worked very well.

The acting was great all the way around – they had many experienced actors on stage, with Macbeth and Lady Macbeth played by the co-artistic directors of the theater, real-life husband and wife Neil and MaryJo.

The “wow” part of the play was the vision for the witches. Neil (who also directed) decided to have the witches be on stage every time something bad was happening. It was as if they were actively driving the evil of the play. It was fantastic. So, they were on stage as servants when Lady Macbeth read the letter from her husband that the king was coming to the castle. They were on stage holding the imaginary dagger in front of Macbeth during the “Is this a dagger I see before me” scene (it was brilliantly played). They shielded Fleance from the murderers while Banquo was being killed so that Macbeth would not succeed. They even came on stage at the end of the play to surround the new king, Malcolm. Since Banquo was supposed “to beget kings,” we know that Malcolm cannot last as king either, so the witches appear to indicate the start of another cycle of violence (it reminded me of the end of the movie Beowulf in that way). I had never thought of the witches as so active in the play, and it worked really really well.

After the play, we loosed most of the kids on the local restaurants (on bus of students went to a McDonald’s so we would not overwhelm the local eateries). Mer and I went with two other teachers to Old Whedon Grille, where there were six students eating. It was about 1:00 or so, and we were the only people in the restaurant (10 people total). It surprised me, then, when it took about 40 minutes to get our food. It was okay – we had good fellowship rolling along in talking about the play and all, but the time pushed us so that the dessert addicts among us could not get anything sweet after the lunch.

Everyone made it safely back, so it was a great trip! Certainly a nice break from the work-day routine.