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Comfortable theater is inviting place to see a passable 'Macbeth'
By Elaine Guregian
Beacon Journal arts and culture writer
POSTED: 09:02 a.m. EDT, Sep 29, 2008
Great Lakes Theater Festival has a snazzy new home. Across the street and around the corner from its owner, PlayhouseSquare, it has set up housekeeping in the Hanna Theatre, a 1921 building that has undergone a $14.7 million facelift.
This week, Great Lakes opened the doors on its 47th season with Macbeth at the Hanna. The point of the renovation seems to have been to make the space as cozy as someone's living room. In many ways it succeeds. As if to say, ''this is a convivial place,'' a bar is situated just inside the cozy 550-seat auditorium. Friday night, at a preview of Saturday's official opening night, traffic actually jammed a bit around the bar area, which you have to walk through to get to your seat.
Banquette seats and lounge/bar seats at the back offer an alternative to the box seats upstairs and the plush, traditional fold-down single seats around the thrust stage (which extends into the audience on three sides). Audience members seemed to like the amenities; I saw many of them balancing a wine glass as they sat down. And on Friday, there was a high proportion of young people in the mixed-age group.
Great news about the acoustics: I could easily and clearly hear every word both from a traditional seat downstairs and from upstairs, where I tried out the narrow row of seats across the center back. Depending on your height, you may find, as I did, that the safety rail is a distraction, right in the middle of your view from this single row upstairs. But from upstairs, you also get a great view of the ornately decorated coffered ceiling, which looks like individual gilded candy wrappers around medallions, cherubs or animals.
In its staging, Macbeth took advantage of the mechanical potential of the thrust stage, which is on a hydraulic lift that can raise and lower it. Director Charles Fee also made it a point to bring the actors close, having actors enter through the theater and at one point, seating Macbeth at the edge of the stage, just spitting distance from first-row patrons.
The scenic design by Gage Williams is graphically arresting, but the overall concept was tired. Drummers were stationed on either side of the stage to thump enormous drums or rattle a thunder sheet. The ersatz Japanese theatricality was completed by wispy wood flute effects and the three witches in Kabuki-white makeup. Assigning the witches stylized movements to perform in synchrony came unfortunately close to a parody of modern dance.
And while well prepared, the cast never lifted off. It was possible to admire the effect of using a ribbon of red fabric to represent blood (and there's lots of blood in Shakespeare's tragedy) without feeling at all concerned. More than once, the audience laughed when it shouldn't have. Among other things, dimming the house lights lower might have helped create more tension.
Aled Davies was excellent, speaking his lines as King Duncan as comfortably as if this were his everyday parlance. Dougfred Miller (Macbeth), Laura Perrotta (Lady Macbeth), David Anthony Smith (Macduff) and Lynn Robert Berg (Banquo) were more than adequate but less than stellar in their leading roles.
For the first time this season, the Festival is opening its doors 90 minutes before shows to let patrons peek at its preparations. Friends who attended Wednesday's preview got to see a fight scene being rehearsed before the show.
The Festival is offering new incentives like hors d'oeuvres in the bar on its Happy Hour Fridays and the chance to linger for a Hanna-tini at Nightcap Saturdays. Clearly, it's working hard to make the Hanna not just a good place to see a play but also a comfortable, cool place to hang out. Beginning Oct. 8, Stephen Sondheim's Into the Woods, directed by Victoria Bussert, will run in repertory with Macbeth. A return trip is in order.
Elaine Guregian can be reached at 330-996-3574 or eguregian@thebeaconjournal.com
Great Lakes Theater Festival has a snazzy new home. Across the street and around the corner from its owner, PlayhouseSquare, it has set up housekeeping in the Hanna Theatre, a 1921 building that has undergone a $14.7 million facelift.
This week, Great Lakes opened the doors on its 47th season with Macbeth at the Hanna. The point of the renovation seems to have been to make the space as cozy as someone's living room. In many ways it succeeds. As if to say, ''this is a convivial place,'' a bar is situated just inside the cozy 550-seat auditorium. Friday night, at a preview of Saturday's official opening night, traffic actually jammed a bit around the bar area, which you have to walk through to get to your seat.
Banquette seats and lounge/bar seats at the back offer an alternative to the box seats upstairs and the plush, traditional fold-down single seats around the thrust stage (which extends into the audience on three sides). Audience members seemed to like the amenities; I saw many of them balancing a wine glass as they sat down. And on Friday, there was a high proportion of young people in the mixed-age group.
Great news about the acoustics: I could easily and clearly hear every word both from a traditional seat downstairs and from upstairs, where I tried out the narrow row of seats across the center back. Depending on your height, you may find, as I did, that the safety rail is a distraction, right in the middle of your view from this single row upstairs. But from upstairs, you also get a great view of the ornately decorated coffered ceiling, which looks like individual gilded candy wrappers around medallions, cherubs or animals.
In its staging, Macbeth took advantage of the mechanical potential of the thrust stage, which is on a hydraulic lift that can raise and lower it. Director Charles Fee also made it a point to bring the actors close, having actors enter through the theater and at one point, seating Macbeth at the edge of the stage, just spitting distance from first-row patrons.
The scenic design by Gage Williams is graphically arresting, but the overall concept was tired. Drummers were stationed on either side of the stage to thump enormous drums or rattle a thunder sheet. The ersatz Japanese theatricality was completed by wispy wood flute effects and the three witches in Kabuki-white makeup. Assigning the witches stylized movements to perform in synchrony came unfortunately close to a parody of modern dance.
And while well prepared, the cast never lifted off. It was possible to admire the effect of using a ribbon of red fabric to represent blood (and there's lots of blood in Shakespeare's tragedy) without feeling at all concerned. More than once, the audience laughed when it shouldn't have. Among other things, dimming the house lights lower might have helped create more tension.
Aled Davies was excellent, speaking his lines as King Duncan as comfortably as if this were his everyday parlance. Dougfred Miller (Macbeth), Laura Perrotta (Lady Macbeth), David Anthony Smith (Macduff) and Lynn Robert Berg (Banquo) were more than adequate but less than stellar in their leading roles.
For the first time this season, the Festival is opening its doors 90 minutes before shows to let patrons peek at its preparations. Friends who attended Wednesday's preview got to see a fight scene being rehearsed before the show.
The Festival is offering new incentives like hors d'oeuvres in the bar on its Happy Hour Fridays and the chance to linger for a Hanna-tini at Nightcap Saturdays. Clearly, it's working hard to make the Hanna not just a good place to see a play but also a comfortable, cool place to hang out. Beginning Oct. 8, Stephen Sondheim's Into the Woods, directed by Victoria Bussert, will run in repertory with Macbeth. A return trip is in order.
Elaine Guregian can be reached at 330-996-3574 or eguregian@thebeaconjournal.com
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