The United Nations of Comedy returns with the hottest standups seen on stages and screens from coast to coast. Founded to promote diversity through laughter, the show’s current lineup features an eclectic mix of performers with styles that span the gamut of humor, including New York City-based Anthony DeVito, Jordan Rock (the youngest brother of Chris), Washington, D.C.’s Paris Sashay, and BET “Comic View All-Star” Funnyman Skiba, making his 15th appearance in Charlottesville.
Saturday 11/16. $39.50–49.50, 8pm. The Paramount Theater, 215 E. Main St., Downtown Mall. theparamount.net
Now in its 50th season, the Charlottesville Symphony continues to explore the boundaries of what orchestral music can be. Photo by Alisa Foytik.
When the schedule for this year’s 50th-anniversary season of the Charlottesville Symphony hits the desk of Elizabeth Roberts, the orchestra’s principal bassoonist and longest-serving member eyes the first piece in the first show. It’s Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5, and she’s played it many, many times.
For professional players like Roberts, seeing Beethoven 5 on the setlist is like hearing an audience member request “Free Bird” at a Lynyrd Skynyrd show. The band has played it so often, it’s tough to muster up much enthusiasm.
But this is a 50th-anniversary program. Roberts and the other professionals in the Charlottesville Symphony’s principal seats know what Music Director Ben Rous is thinking. The celebratory season is a time not only to show off the nontraditional work they’ve been doing, but also an opportunity to call back to the masters who’ve come before them.
Plus, Charlottesville’s orchestra has a cheat code when it comes to playing the standards with passion: students.
“What we have are a lot of super-smart kids who are passionate and accomplished and really dedicated to improving,” Roberts says. “They are going to play with a level of energy when you put Beethoven 5 in front of them that the audience is going to sense. They’ve been waiting their whole life to play it.”
The Charlottesville Symphony at the University of Virginia is made up of not only professionals and students, but also community members. It’s a unique construction that’s shared only by two or three other orchestras in the United States. And the local ensemble has been doing it that way for a long time—half a century to be exact.
Tracing back
Even before the Charlottesville Symphony’s official founding in 1974, seeds had been planted in the form of a faculty group.
“We don’t know a lot about it, like the early conductors’ names,” says Janet Kaltenbach, executive director of the Charlottesville Symphony Society, a community nonprofit supporting the organization. “But the narrative of the earliest symphonic music at the university is even older than the symphony itself.”
Four music directors have led the Charlottesville Symphony over its 50 official years: Douglas Hargrave from 1974 to 1991, Carl Roskott from 1991 to 2006, Kate Tamarkin from 2006 to 2017, and Rous, who took the job in 2017.
When Ben Rous took over as Music Director, he brought his own sensibilities to the role, which former director Kate Tamarkin says is welcome and expected. “[Each new conductor adds] something else very important, which is their temperament,” Tamarkin says. Photo by Joyce N. Boghosian.
Each director has also served as the orchestra’s primary conductor, a job that requires more than simply dancing a baton in front of the musicians. The directors oversee the roster, select the music for each season, and bring their own style and energy to the way classical music is translated for the audience.
“Orchestral music is a re-creative art,” Tamarkin says. “The composer needs a partner, an interpreter. Every conductor adds their understanding of the composer and the time when it was written. And they add something else very important, which is their temperament.”
When Hargrave took the lead in 1974, he directed a group of 50 musicians. The orchestra began its subscription series in 1975. Roskott brought with him an impressive resume and bolstered the orchestra’s reputation. At the time, the symphony included six professional musicians as principals. When Tamarkin took over in 2006, 16 principals were on the roster.
Tamarkin again raised the bar in terms of experience as a director and conductor, leading the organization for a decade. In May 2017, Rous uprooted from Norfolk as resident conductor at the Virginia Symphony to move to Charlottesville.
Today, the Charlottesville Symphony is one of the primary public-facing arts organizations at the University of Virginia, according to Jody Kielbasa, UVA vice provost for the arts. “Along with the two museums, the Virginia Film Festival and the theater festival, these organizations have a long history with the university, but more broadly with the Charlottesville community,” he says. “They serve as a bridge to the community.”
A modernist turn
When Rous took the conductor’s baton from Tamarkin, he says he came into a healthy organization. His experience with other national orchestras had taught him that professional groups all share at least one flaw. Professionals, he says, treat playing orchestral music as a job by definition.
Rous immediately felt that the Charlottesville Symphony, with its focus on teaching students to play as well as professionals, had a different air, a more contented air than he’d ever experienced. “We had a great performance culture and a really committed, loyal audience,” he says.
Still, Rous wanted to take the symphony in a new direction. According to Tamarkin, that was expected. As part of the search team seeking her replacement, she wanted someone who would be as different from her as possible.
Rous’ intensity and willingness to experiment with new forms, to take orchestral music to the edge of what people think it can be, fit the playbill. “I decided I could trust this community to be curious along with me, and I made a little bit of a leap of faith that I could be my honest, curious self when choosing what music to program,” he says.
Janet Kaltenbach is the executive director of Charlottesville Symphony Society, a nonprofit that supports the Charlottesville Symphony. Photo by Alisa Foytik.
The result is an orchestra that, in addition to the standards, features music by unfamiliar composers, arrangements listeners have never heard before, and collaborations with novel artists. Last spring, Rous invited drummer, percussionist, and composer JoVia Armstrong to join the Charlottesville Symphony on her cajon drumset. Armstrong, whose own music draws on techno, future soul, hip-hop, and chamber jazz, was a hit. After the performance, concertgoers and players alike told Rous the symphony should feature Armstrong in every show.
Under Rous, the Charlottesville Symphony has also featured an afro-futurist improv jazz flutist, a standard jazz quintet, and music produced from the sound of melting glaciers. This season, the lineup will include rapper Clara Rottsolk during the March 22–23 shows centered around the Mozart’s Requiem and Barber’s Adagio for Strings.
“The overarching goal I have is to expand on what people can get out of an orchestral concert—not just what sounds we are making, but what ideas we can represent, what societal issues we can confront,” Rous says.
Looking to the future
Taylor Ledbetter, like so many middle- class American kids, grew up taking piano lessons. In sixth grade, when many students are first introduced to band instruments—some influenced by programs like the Charlottesville Symphony’s own youth outreach efforts—Ledbetter began playing the flute. She took to it and joined her high-school symphony orchestra in Fort Worth, Texas.
When Ledbetter looked at colleges, she knew she wanted to continue playing music while not compromising her education. The University of Virginia was the perfect fit, in no small part because of the Charlottesville Symphony.
Ledbetter has since taken up the piccolo, with help from UVA professor and Charlottesville Symphony principal flute player Kelly Sulick, and joined the orchestra on the smaller instrument for the spring show last season. This year, she’ll play in the February show featuring Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet.
Ledbetter’s story isn’t unique among the hard-charging, intellectually minded students who make up the youngest portion of the Charlottesville Symphony. But symphonic music isn’t for everyone, especially those who’ve never seen it live before. According to Tamarkin, most folks who see it even once come to love it.
UVA student Taylor Ledbetter will play piccolo with the orchestra in February’s performance of Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet. Supplied photo.
If the Charlottesville Symphony wants to keep playing for another 50 years, it has to continue to put people in the seats. One way it does that is through education, from the organization’s youth programs up through the students who learn to play pieces like Beethoven’s 5th alongside professional musicians and community members.
According to Concertmaster Dan Sender, the educational structure of Charlottesville Symphony rehearsals is unlike any other experience for young players. While Sender admits “first rehearsals are the worst” as the students sit down in front of a new piece of challenging music, the opportunity to play alongside professionals and accomplished community members in their section brings the students along quickly.
“We develop a language to coach and critique our section play,” Sender says. “Could you imagine how good a student’s essay would be if the teacher was sitting next to them and helping them with each sentence? The final product would be outstanding.”
The Charlottesville Symphony’s efforts are paying off. After five decades of continuous operation and overcoming the COVID-19 pandemic, the local audience remains strong.
“It has become a real challenge for many orchestras,” says community member and clarinetist Rick Kessel, who’s played in multiple national orchestras over the past 20 years. “The fact that this community comes out to support us is just amazing, and we see a lot of young faces in the audience. That is why Charlottesville is so unique. They pack the house.”
Symphonic riches
The Charlottesville Symphony at the University of Virginia is the longest-running classical music organization in the city (by a margin of five years), but it’s not the only place to get your orchestra on.
Waynesboro Symphony Orchestra Waynesboro Symphony Orchestra, the 2021 American Prize winner for Best Community Orchestra Performance and 2024 recipient of the Shenandoah Valley’s Circle of Excellence in the Arts Award, plays an extensive season of classical music at the First Presbyterian churches in Waynesboro and Staunton.
Albemarle Symphony Orchestra Formerly the Crozet Community Orchestra, the Albemarle Symphony Orchestra typically has around 70 players on the roster. Launched in October 2013 by co-founders Denise Murray and Philip Clark, the orchestra plays two to four shows per season at churches and schools in Crozet and Charlottesville.
Youth Orchestras of Central Virginia In addition to the area’s award-winning high school orchestras, the Youth Orchestras of Central Virginia, founded 45 years ago, play a full season of classical concerts. The orchestras, headquartered in Charlottesville, feature players from elementary, middle, and high schools around central Virginia. The two full symphony orchestras, string orchestra, and chamber music club draw public, private, and homeschool students from the surrounding counties to participate in their annual programs.
Youth Orchestra of Central Virginia. Photo by Caleb Davis and Abe Granger.
Other organizations Still haven’t reached your cap on classical? The Charlottesville Chamber Music Festival held its 25th annual show in September and shows no signs of stopping heading into next year. Charlottesville Classical, a service of WTJU and available for streaming at charlottesvilleclassical.org, plays the full classical repertoire, from medieval chants to modern compositions, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. UVA’s Tuesday Evening Concert Series, founded in 1948, features shows on semi-monthly Tuesdays in Old Cabell Hall. And go off the orchestral path with Three Notch’d Road—The Virginia Baroque Ensemble’s performances of historical repertoires offered in a subscription series, or the Cville Band, one of the oldest amateur community bands in the nation, which performs locally several times a year.
The UVA Drama season wanders open with Love is the Greater Labyrinth, a retelling of the Greek myth of Theseus and the Minotaur. The show features a new translation of the final work written by revolutionary 17th-century Mexican playwright Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. Guest director Anna Rebek draws a mixture of comedy, tragedy, adventure, and romance from a cast of student actors. Conquering the Minotaur is just the beginning for the character of Tesio, as he navigates a maze of mistaken identities, dueling affections, and the wrath of King Minos.
It’s a mad dash to the finish line of dramatic excellence with the 20th annual Adrenaline Film Project. In just 72 hours, groups of three will write, film, edit, and screen original stories with the aid of industry experts. Teams can draw from a professional actor database, or cast friends, family, and neighbors as the stars of their three- to five-minute short films. The entire process takes place at Light House Studio, including screenings of the final cuts, where cash prizes are offered for the Judges Choice, Mentor Selection, Audience, and Actors awards.
Sunday 11/10. $15, 7pm. Light House Studio at Vinegar Hill Theatre, 220 W. Market St. lighthousestudio.org
From his first film, Baby It’s You, directed by John Sayles, to his recent role as Dr. Martin “Papa” Brenner in Netflix’s “Stranger Things” and a star turn in Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, Matthew Modine’s accomplishments in film, television, and on stage define the range of his talent. In addition to Sayles, the Golden Globe Award-winning actor has also worked with directors Oliver Stone, Stanley Kubrick, Robert Altman, Spike Lee, and Jonathan Demme, to name a few. He’s been directing since the ’90s, and is the co-founder of the production company Cinco Dedos Peliculas. At the Virginia Film Festival, Modine will participate in discussions following the screening of 1984’s Birdy, and the documentary I Hope This Helps!. He answered a few questions for us by email ahead of his appearances.—TK
C-VILLE Weekly: What attracted you to produce the documentary I Hope This Helps!?
Matthew Modine: My producing partner at Cinco Dedos Peliculas, Adam Rackoff, knows that I am curious about consciousness. What is it? When did we become conscious of our consciousness? When did humans become self-aware of our existence?
These are impossible questions to answer and a fascinating subject to delve through. I believe human consciousness has slowly evolved over millions of years. By contrast, artificial intelligence is pretty much brand new, and something that is evolving way, way, way too fast. If we get this wrong—if we don’t have guardrails in place—we will not be able to put this horse back in the barn.
If you have concerns about the consolidation of power, the distribution of news and current events, ‘deepfakes,’ the freedom of movement, you should watch this movement closely.
There’s no way to know what countries the U.S. is continually suspicious of—aren’t already way ahead of the west in this space. “Artificial General Intelligence” is already happening. For sure. This means AI is now able to improve itself—with no human intervention. That should concern all of us. I don’t think it’s hyperbole to sound the bell of caution. I Hope This Helps! humorously illustrates where we are, and where this AI shop is headed.
You’ve worked with an impressive list of directors. Who stands out?
Many of the directors I’ve had the pleasure of working with are still living. So I wouldn’t want to pick favorites. Suffice it to say, I’ve learned something useful from each of them.
What role has had the most personal effect on you?
Maybe Louden Swain, from Vision Quest. It’s a coming-of-age story about a high-school wrestler. I learned from the experience how important it is to maintain focus and that whatever it is we hope to accomplish demands effort and self-determination. Some folks are gifted with natural genius and athletic abilities. But even those who are blessed have to put in the effort to master a craft.
How did you prepare to play Dr. Martin Brenner in “Stranger Things”?
First off, I do not enjoy playing “bad” guys. I get no pleasure from it. The Duffer Brothers, Ross and Matt, wrote terrific scripts and gave me space to create a person that is a conundrum. Someone the audience would be confused by. His look, clothing, hair, speech pattern, that was good fun to pull together with the show’s creative team.
In 1985, New York magazine noted that you and Matthew Broderick were fine actors, but not part of the Brat Pack. Did the Brat Pack label have any effect on your roles or social engagements at the time?
Matthew and I, simply by living in NYC, would have been 3,000 miles away from that silliness. Matthew is a very talented and disciplined theater actor. If he was going out in those days, I’d bet it was with legends from the theater world. I was busy going from film project to film project, two years in England with Stanley Kubrick, during the height of the Brat Pack era. There wasn’t any time in our lives for being in a club.
You are known for your work as an environmental activist. What is your current focus?
Being an environmentalist isn’t a hobby. It’s a demanding commitment to protecting the entirety of nature. The world is like a spider’s web and what we do to a single thread has an impact upon the entire web.
An oil tanker sinking doesn’t just affect the place it sunk and spilled its millions of gallons. The repercussions are far-reaching. The nuclear disaster at Fukushima is an example of how a nuclear explosion in a considerably small location can affect the entire Pacific Ocean and all the creatures within it.
So my focus is global. We have searched the universe looking for “Goldilocks” planets—places that resemble our home—and so far found none. This should magnify our responsibility to protecting all life on the earth and the soil, air, and water, and demanding peaceful resolution through diplomacy to or momentary differences.
What was your reaction when you discovered that the Trump campaign used clips of you from the movie Full Metal Jacket in an online post?
I think my statement on the subject covers how I felt.
[In his statement published in Entertainment Weekly, Modine said, “… Trump has twisted and profoundly distorted Kubrick’s powerful anti-war film into a perverse, homophobic, and manipulative tool of propaganda.”]
With such an accomplished career, what would you change?
We cannot change the past. So it’s a total waste of time to live in regret. I’m here. I’m here now. Believe it or not, 99 percent of life is trying to accomplish something so that we are appreciated, maybe even loved, for what we happily give to others. That means for me, joyfully and gleefully doing for others.
Drac is back in a sexy and sarcastic off-Broadway production making a regional debut that’s bound to be A-positive. Dracula: A Comedy of Terrors takes Bram Stoker’s titular Count and turns up the camp with gender-bending, nonstop antics that’ll have you screaming with laughter. This riotous reimagining follows the basic beats of the Gothic novel and parodies the prose with pop-culture references sharper than a wooden stake. Due to strong sexual content, adult humor, and simulated sex scenes, this performance is recommended for patrons aged 14 to undying.
Through Sunday 11/24. Times and ticket prices vary. Blackfriars Playhouse, 10 S. Market St., Staunton. americanshakespearecenter.com
Electronic music and intermedia art collide at the annual TechnoSonics Festival. With the theme of immersion, the 2024 iteration explores aspects of the world that envelop minds, bodies, and spirits. Sounds that surround, and environments that encapsulate, are all fair game at events on UVA Grounds and at Visible Records. The featured work in electronic music, intermedia, and sound art comes out of UVA’s composition and computer technologies program. Special guest artist Rohan Chander—aka BAKUDI SCREAM—offers a presentation covering his creative process on Friday afternoon, followed by performances on Friday and Saturday nights.
Thursday 10/17–Saturday 10/19. Free, times and locations vary. music.virginia.edu/technosonics-2024
Live Arts kicks off its season with two thought-provoking shows, "What the Constitution Means to Me" and "An Iliad," in repertory through October 28. Details at livearts.org. Supplied photo.
We humans are social animals, which is one reason why theater endures as a way for people to share space and feel something together. In a time when our nation feels quite divided (ahem: understatement), any opportunity to learn from history and engage with challenging subjects in thought-provoking ways is a good opportunity. The current Live Arts shows have us covered on that front with back-to-back chances to dig in to the depth of the human experience from two distinct yet resonant perspectives.
As Live Arts’ 2024/2025 Voyages season picks up steam, What the Constitution Means to Me and An Iliad share the Founders Theater and alternate performances. The choice of presenting the plays in repertory makes sense, because they are very much in conversation. Both shows feature powerful performances enhanced by the black box theater’s intimate staging conditions. Audience members feel essential to the storytelling.
In What the Constitution Means to Me, we find ourselves in an American Legion hall represented by a minimalist patriotic set. Enter Heidi, a character based on playwright/original lead Heidi Schreck, who takes us to a scholarship speech contest about the U.S. Constitution that she competed in as a teen. Heidi, portrayed by Tovah Close the night I attended, invites the audience to play the cigar-smoking men who filled the American Legion halls of her youth. We were a predominantly female audience, and the first thing many did when invited to embody men was to take up more space, which resonates with the play’s central theme.
Through Heidi’s personal stories, and those of her grandmothers and mother, we come to understand how preposterous it is for Heidi to be speechifying about the personal relevance of a document that first explicitly mentions women in the 19th amendment, passed in 1919, that granted women the right to vote. As a woman, I found the play to be validating and emotionally challenging. Heidi’s statistics about rape and domestic partner violence against women landed pointedly. Just as the weight of the traumas became overwhelming, there was an intermission. Let me tell you: We hit the bar hard.
Fortunately, the play’s second act offers a respite from heartstring plucking (mostly) by featuring a debate between Heidi and an actual debater (Aafreen Aamir). The topic is whether we should keep or abolish the U.S. Constitution. Honestly, it never occurred to me that we could abolish our Constitution and institute a new one—one that protects the rights of Native Americans, people of color, queer folks, women, and other minorities with the same vehemence as in protecting the rights of white men like our founding fathers. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a proud American, which is probably why the idea of abolishing the Constitution never occurred to me. I’m also a disheartened American, an American who sees that some things need to change as our country continues to evolve, just as the founding fathers envisioned it would.
The following night, I saw An Iliad, which blends sections of Robert Fagles’ translation of Homer’s epic poem with moments of modern contextualization. Two nameless, timeless poets—an elder and a younger—arrive and investigate the sparse set. For several minutes, the audience watches as the elder, portrayed by David Minton (also the director), and the younger by Jesse Timmons, set the stage before beginning the tale. I love that live theater has the power to get me to care about watching a man adjust the placement of a milk crate—and I did care!
The Iliad is a familiar tale to many, with ancient heroes Achilles and Hector leading armies during the Trojan War. The added context breathes life into this show. The Younger Poet likens (spoilers) ill-fated Patroclus’ bloodlust in battle to our modern experience of road rage. He begins by expressing a degree of anger relatable to anyone who’s been cut off in traffic. However, Timmons then takes his performance to an extreme that fills the room with discomfort, graphically describing physical violence, inappropriate as a reaction for a roadway mishap. The Elder Poet touches the younger, to snap him out of his fiery passion, and the younger apologizes, saying something like, “That’s not me. It’s not me.” Reckless uncontrollable rage does not define the man, or at least The Younger Poet doesn’t want it to. One of the play’s most affecting aspects is the tension created by the tenderness between the two characters juxtaposed against the horrors of the Trojan War and all the wars after, including those that are raging even now.
Founded by pioneering choreographer Alvin Ailey in 1974, Ailey II has been pairing the talent of early-career dancers with emerging choreographers to shape the next generation of modern dance for the past 50 years. In Revelations, his seminal work, Ailey incorporates African American spirituals, song-sermons, gospel music, and holy blues to plumb the nadir of grief and the apex of joy felt within the soul. This 1960 masterwork is inspired by the choreographer’s youth spent in the Baptist Church and rural Texas.
Wednesday 10/9. $30–50, 7pm. The Paramount Theater, 215 E. Main St., Downtown Mall. theparamount.net
The lights are on and everybody’s watching K.P. Powell as Macbeth at American Shakespeare Center’s Blackfriars Playhouse in Staunton through November 23. Image courtesy of American Shakespeare Center.
“We do it with the lights on,” says The American Shakespeare Center’s Blackfriars Playhouse website about its use of “universal lighting.” So right up front you know that whatever you see in its elegant, woody environs will take place with the house lights aglow.
Understandably, in its staunch attempt to maintain historical accuracy wherever possible, the ASC’s staging conditions reflect the decision to keep the joint looking like what we surmise The Bard of Avon may have presented himself. Admirable.
Watching other Shakespeare and Elizabethan plays at ASC, that decision has never been an issue for me. With its engaging acting and uptempo pace, the company’s current production of Macbeth, directed by José Zayas, works on many fronts. Yet, I feel that it suffers at times because of that unwavering dedication to keep the room well-lit.
And while the Blackfriars of old did it with the lights on, too, the pre-electric powered atmosphere would have been a much dimmer affair. I’m willing to concede that this may be my own hang-up. After all, I hold Macbeth close to my heart as a supernatural bloodbath of a play, more than a political thriller or a treatise on the dark nature of man.
Aside from my personal grievances, it’s a great production. And before we go into my gripes, here’s the gist of the story for anyone who’s forgotten: Three witches tell Macbeth that he’ll be king, and then he and Lady Macbeth murder a bunch of people they’re close with to make that prophecy happen faster. It doesn’t work out, and they both die too.
This production has many positives that have nothing to do with lighting. K.P. Powell does a thoroughly commendable job as the sometimes fierce, sometimes cowering Macbeth, interpreted with an irrepressible warmth. While just about every version of The Scottish Play unwinds a coldly reptilian, and at times weak-willed character, Powell, to my memory, may very well be the only likable Macbeth ever created. He’s almost too charming—and occasionally quite funny—but if we’re to believe that the role he’s assumed convinces those around him of his goodness as he slashes his way up the political ladder, the charismatic portrayal checks out.
Nervous laughter elicited from the crowd at odd times is surely the result of Powell’s continued eye contact with audience members under such illuminated conditions. No doubt they were often laughing a bit more than the script—or Powell for that matter—was pulling for.
Alongside Powell, Kenn Hopkins, Jr. as Macbeth’s ill-fated bestie Banquo, is a mountain of a man with a booming voice that positively fills every corner of the theater with a strength demanding attention. Also excellent, Angela Iannone embodies a commanding King Duncan, summarily slain offstage in Act Two.
Though there’s clearly a challenge in tasking a troupe of eight with performing no less than 16 characters, it felt like the main looming hindrance—lights—threatened the overall success of this interpretation. For me, the three “weird sisters” have an appropriately otherworldly quality elevated by a trio of grotesque, mascot-like, oversized heads and gauzy flowing shrouds. When they emerge at the start of the play to predict Macbeth’s future, they could be frightful and monstrous. They should be. Yet they are too plainly out in the open, undermining the ability to persuade us we’ve settled into the hazy Scottish moors in the thick of a thunderstorm.
The lack of obscurity works against the action indicated in the text later on as well. Deep in the “thick night” and “blanket of the dark,” Lady Macbeth mentions when she and her husband carry out their regicide, it’s just more difficult to buy. An audience always requires a healthy suspension of disbelief, but it was asking too much of Leah Gabriel (Lady Macbeth); a proposition made even more difficult when she’s wandering about insanely whispering over her part in the king’s murder in the final act.
During the play’s culminating scenes of war, the light strikes again. Tragic hero Macduff avenges his slaughtered family and rights the wrongs against the royals by killing and beheading Macbeth—yet spirited, compelling Aidan O’Reilly is undermined by the visual clarity of the action. The fight scenes would work well in a more strategic staging, but as O’Reilly and Powell grapple and stab at one another, the brightness of the room casts their struggle as mere pantomime unbefitting such fine acting.
One saving grace of staying historically accurate comes in the incorporation of persistent musical elements, albeit with a 21st-century vibe. The unexpected use of the bass line of TV on the Radio’s “Wolf Like Me” (incorrectly credited to a cover version by Lera Lynn) helps build tension. Same goes for other dramatic moments heightened with a cacophonous soundtrack made off-stage with a din of drums and crash of cymbals.
To be fair, I’m not suggesting that the ASC needs to install spotlights and dry ice machines at Blackfriars. Only that perhaps more serious consideration be given to uphold the darker interests of a sinister, spooky play. Yet if you always imagined Macbeth, at its core, as a backstabbing title tussle or a psychological thriller about the power of suggestion, you’ll love this even if you have to wear sunglasses.
