Review: Lady M
"Macbeth," from The Lady's point of view, reviewed by Howard Shapiro.
By Howard Shapiro
INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
Any way you see it, Lady Macbeth had a rotten marriage. How rotten? In Swim Pony's Lady M, it's the wife's turn to parse the situation. At root, she wishes Macbeth were her play – she could do the killing so much better, with more efficiency and style.
Trouble is, Macbeth sort of is Lady M's play already. She is the eminence grise, the force behind the evil, the instigating battery that powers Macbeth's evil doing. But OK, let her present us with her take: For 29 years, she's been married to a person with no showy backbone – not exactly a wimp, but not a classy macho man. She out-testosterones him. And then when she actually becomes a queen, what's the fruit of all her ambitions – to stay in her chambers and do … nothing? "I can wash a king's blood from his hands," she wails, "but I can't attend a meeting?"
Swim Pony Performing Arts' ultimately unfulfilling Lady M is conceived by director Adrienne Mackey and Catharine K. Slusar, the estimable actress who plays our heroine to Charlotte Northeast's Macbeth in this all-woman production. The show presents a Lady Macbeth in her dingy chamber (Lisi Stoessel's set seems something like the inside of a dustball, lit mystically by Maria Shaplin), wanting to be a feminist, not knowing what that means and mad from the combination of the two.
Her husband may have those weird sisters entrancing him, but Lady M has her spirits, 10 of them, buzzing and chanting (altogether too much) and shedding more confusion on her. When the Macbeths are speaking from Shakespeare's text, or molding it to into new forms, Lady M steps out of the play to address us directly, as in the little personal interviews in reality TV shows that follow prefabricated real-life flare-ups.
Even though Slusar's portrayal is remarkable – smart in her interpretation, sharp with her movement and evocative delivery – this Lady M offers us no connection, no cause for empathy or concern or even contempt. Instead of slinging Slusar's tour de force directly at us, the script carries her out to sea.
$25 and $30. 7 p.m. Saturday, Sunday and Tuesday through Friday. Arts Bank, 601 S. Broad St., at South Street.