Monday, July 17, 2006

Stragglers

Not quite finished with the Macbeth stuff yet. Here goes.

  • From BroadwayWorld:
    I thought the peice was brilliant, a masterpeice if you will. Leiv blew me away. Even before he became king, you could tell he was carrying so much weight on his shoulders. Completly internal. Then Jennifer as Lady Mcbeth! Wow! So....Human...I know she didnt get the strong reviews like Mr.M, but i found the character so real- Not related to other performances (RSC version and almost all others) where she is played strong with no emotions- practically another witch. I really was concerned about the couple- not just the war...>A real emotional experience....kudos to director (Moises Kauffman)-- The set- brilliant....

    A great show, with great performances......at a time where it is needed....

  • From Catherine Elizabeth:

    I read Macbeth in high school, and have never seen it, so I was very happy to let Liev Schreiber and Jennifer Ehle act it out for me.
    Overall, I enjoyed the production very much. It had been edited, so it felt very fast moving. I thought both Jennifer and Liev did a very nice job. Two of the fight sequences were remarkably beautiful.
    That being said, here are a few problems I had. The Public's theme for this years Shakespeare in the Park is war. I feel that there are many Shakespeare scripts to choose from that would work nicely. Macbeth isn't one of them. Yes, there is war in this play, but I feel the main themes of Macbeth are on a much more personal level (ambition, greed, destiny, consequences, etc.) It seemed unnatural to try to make it be about war.

  • From Glamourite:

    While the cast as a whole was strong, only two members really stood out of the canvas: the incomparable Liev Schreiber as Macbeth and the graceful yet forceful Jennifer Ehle as Lady Macbeth. Acclaimed stage and screen actor Liev Schreiber has been performing in productions at the Public Theater for the past decade; in this time, he has established himself as the premium Shakespearean actor of his generation in America. According to the New York Times, Schreiber has “consistently won acclaim for the vocal beauty and subintelligence of his performances as Hamlet, Iago, and Henry V, among others.” His Macbeth was so captivating that you cannot help but sit on the edge of your sit and listen to his every word and watch his every movement. Almost as equally impressive was Jennifer Ehle as Lady Macbeth. Acting opposite Schreiber and not fading into the scenery is an incredible feat in itself; however, Jennifer Ehle succeeded in providing a credible counterpart to Schreiber’s Macbeth.

  • Foreign language reports: Toni in German and er, someone else in Japanese. Babelfish for the brave.

  • Some "saw it, liked it" reports: Cory and Annie, lobolance, eerabaum, Dona, damedroiture, DrunkBunch, Rachel, amrita, okyoufiends, Jenni Leigh (who spots Spiderman's aunt and Julia Stiles in the audience), Laughing Wild (mildly critical).

  • Notables but not quotable: Ed describes the show quite evocatively, Terri has a photo from behind the Delacorte, Kirstin writes about the final show (spots Voldemort)

  • Views from the queue: Brooks Lampe gets philosophical, Stacy blackberry-blogs from the queue.

  • Star-spotting: Toby Shuster went to the gala and was dumbstruck by Naomi Watts, Cindy also attended and was similarly awed by the celeb-density, Isaac describes the afterparty like so: "just imagine standing in the middle of a castle in eighty-degree heat at midnight, basically in five hundred people's way". Heh.
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