hgmacbeth

Hannah Galt April 23, 2013 Critical Essay on __Macbeth__ __Macbeth__ is a fairly well known Shakespeare play. Many students, including myself, read it in high school. If I had had no background knowledge of the play the night that I went to see it, I would have been entirely lost and confused. Even having read the play not long ago, there were times throughout it when I was not clear on who was who or what was going on. Although I am sure that many did know the play and were able to follow along completely, there were also those in the audience who were just as lost or more lost than I was. A brief introduction from the director or from one of the characters could have set the groundwork and made the storyline a little less murky.

The mood was very somber. The storyline of Macbeth is very intense and heavy and the mood of the play reflected that, as it should. A funny or light version of Macbeth would defeat the purpose of the play. The actors did a great job maintaining their seriousness and intensity throughout the play. The set and the lights were incredible. The set alone on the stage was a sight to see. The levels that were created with the three-paneled structure gave the actors more space to move around and to work with. The movement of the three parts of the set was so smooth that it added to the creepiness and mysteriousness of the mood. I kept wondering if people were moving the panels during set changes or if it was done by machines. The color blocking on the set added contrast and interest. The colors were slightly shiny which gave off an interesting affect. I also appreciated that the three panels were the entire set, with the exception of one scene. There was so much going on that the audience needed to pay attention to that any additional changes would have taken away from the play and been a distraction. The cast did a great job using the set and the space available to them for their greatest expression.

The make up was applied in such a manner as to make the characters appear to be stylized and fake. Duncan’s make up did make him look like an old man but he looked almost as if he was made of plastic. I am not sure whether this was intentional or not. I also thought the same thing about the actor playing Lennox, Myles Haslam. The lines around his eyes gave him the appearance of a doll. It may have appeared this way because I was sitting very close to the stage and could see the details better than someone who was sitting further away.

The costumes were also impeccably done. The budget for the costumes must have been significant because every character’s costume was very detailed obviously specifically chosen. The costumes of the three witches were the most interesting to me. The flowy, white fabric that was the outermost layer reminded me more of ghosts than witches. I would have thought that witches would be put in old, dirty, torn, bag-lady outfits, instead of these elegant, beautiful robes. They hardly looked like witches at all. However, the lights that were underneath the white fabric helped to create the eeriness that was key to their purpose. Their headdresses were quite prominent and unique. They each wore a cap that covered any hair and surrounded the face in a circle. They must have had metal contraptions that the white fabric was draped around. It created a square shaped space around each of the witches’ heads. The purpose of these I can only speculate. They added to the strangeness and curiosity surrounding the witches and made their physical bodies appear bigger than the actual bodies of the actresses. The starkness and crispness of their costumes made them stand out from all of the other characters and made them seem supernatural even, of a different world than the other characters.

Many of the actors were wearing plastic devices that looked slightly like armor. It is written in the program that the costume designer used these medical devices to show when a character was vulnerable to the infection from the witches. The devices are supposed to protect the characters from the infection in the kingdom. I observed that there were certain characters whose devices did not remain on the entire play, coming off for certain scenes and then returning. These subtle changes may have meant that when the devices were off, the character was especially susceptible to the infection of the witches.

The lights that were used in the witches were also used on a smaller scale in some of the other characters. During specific moments of the play, a light became visible on the chest of certain characters. This showed when the witches were having an effect on the characters. This was an affective method to show this connection because it was not always clear when the characters were under the influence of the witches without the lights. Lights were not only used uniquely in the witches’ costumes, but also in multiple creative ways. The visions that Macduff saw of daggers and later on, Macbeth, were made up of lights on screens that lowered down. The lights shifted to show that the vision was moving and changing. This effect with the lights helped to emphasize that what Macduff was seeing was only a vision and that the rest of the characters could not see it.

The University of Georgia’s production of __Macbeth__ was a beautifully done performance. The make up, costumes, set, and lighting combined with the other aspects of the production to create an interesting and unique piece of art.