The Play's the Thing

Three of the last four plays I've seen have been "concept" plays, or plays with a gimmick.

Cape May: the lead character is a beach house!  There is minimal scenery.  The floor plan is marked on the stage and the walls,  but the live actor playing the house watches "his" family through a few generations, with all kinds of life changes and drama - in health, economics, relationships, and the like.  It could easily have been saccharine or maudlin, but the actor played it just right with a warm, engaging persona.

Hamlet: four actors play all of the roles! (Well, the ticket-taker steps in briefly a few times, but I don't think she speaks.)  It was interesting, although sometimes played for laughs in distracting ways. (For example, actors would sometimes archly exaggerate their shifting roles rather than allowing the audience to be transported by the words and action.  And after the grave-digger dumped a bunch of dirt in the middle of the stage, we had other characters rolling around in it later on.)   But the actress playing Gertrude, Ophelia (and many other roles) was heart-wrenching in the Ophelia madness scenes.  

They did some interesting things with the space itself.  There were two intermissions, and each time, they reconfigured the actor/audience set-up.

Orange shows key area for actors.
Arrows show direction of audience chairs.

Macbeth: one actor plays all the roles!  Alan Cumming, to be precise.  The setting is a mental institution.  There are actually two other actors on stage or visible through a viewing window some of the time.  They are dressed as staff of the institution, and although they are mostly silent, they do take on the doctor and nurse lines for the sleepwalking scene.  (I couldn't help thinking of Annie and Emily playing those roles in our 6th grade production!  And of course - not coincidentally - Annie is now a medical doctor in real life.)  It was interesting to watch this as an adaptation, to anticipate and appreciate how the play was adapted to this particular conceit.  The three witches were particularly well done.

But again, some of this was played for laughs - playing the king (Duncan) as a queen, for example.  And putting some slight emphasis on the word "coming" in the script (like Cumming - get it?).  The actor does a fair amount of dressing and undressing over the course of the performance - though with a somewhat unnatural modesty, considering that he is, in fact, nude.*   I can't quite put my finger on it, but I walked away with the distinct impression that this production is to some extent an indulgence or showcase for Mr. Cumming.  This feeling perhaps crystallized for me when the actor had sex with himself (alternating between Macbeth and Lady Macbeth).

So the bottom line is that I thought it was an interesting conceit, well realized, and I'm glad I saw it --  but it didn't move me, and it didn't bring out any new subtleties of language or character; it didn't enrich my understanding or appreciation of the play itself.  Then again, Macbeth is a play I know unusually well.

FN*: I don't know if this was an attempt to cater to perceived American sensitivities on the subject of nudity - that is, I don't know if the London performance was less coy.  In NYC, at least, I have seen two plays with full frontal male nudity, so it's clearly not unheard of.  But those were both off-Broadway, so maybe the rules are different on Broadway itself.  For example, The Full Monty went primly obscure when the actors finally took it all off.)