Summary 
Modernized to an unspecified time, a lean and mean Scottish tragedy focuses intensely on the vicious warrior and his beautiful scheming wife. An evocative sound design and Celtic original score enhance the raw staging, and the overall impact is powerful theater.
Design
Directed by Kate Buckley. Set by Joseph P. Tilford. Lights Shannon McKinney. Costumes by Linda Roethke. Musical arrangements and sound by Barry G. Funderburg. Fights by Steve Pickering.
Cast
Jeffrey Bunn (Banquo), Gene Cordon (Porter/Murderer), Alison Halstead (Witch), Michael Park Ingram (Witch #2/Murderer), Ted Koch (Macduff), Lia Mortensen (Lady Macbeth), William Sidney Parker (Lenox), Ryan Pfeiffer (Fleans/Young Seyward), Steve Pickering (Macbeth), Naama Potok (Lady Macduff/Witch), Josh Stamberg (Ross), Nathan Vogt (Malcolm), Ray Wild (Duncan/Old Seyward).
Analysis
Next Theatre's brutish Macbeth brings the dramatic impact of a vicious punch. Played on a stripped down and shadowy stage, the production, directed by Kate Buckley, is lean and mean, an efficiently staged examination of ambition and guilt. Buckley's style of hard-edged and blunt dialogue, accentuated by a sleek spareness of design that is more focused and uncluttered than just minimalist, suits Macbeth's bloody story well. A spacious playing area bounded by bare brick walls features just a metallic ramp leading to a small platform and a column at center stage, and the stage floor and some walls are painted dark woodsy green. The blasted heath seems an expansive darkness, a silent and threatening gloominess. For interior scenes, sparse lighting flickers like barely effective lanterns or torches within the expanse of a cold Scottish castle, and the stage fills with moving shadows and frightening places to lurk and hide.
Buckley begins the production with a stylized prelude, a wordless introduction as a grunting Macbeth - with the valiant Banquo at his side - battles and finally overcomes an onslaught of enemies. Next Theatre's artistic director, Steve Pickering, plays the bullish Macbeth as a beastly warrior, strong of shoulder and wealthy in courage and valor, but somewhat lacking in intellectual and moral vigor. Solidly built, with a beard and closely cropped, almost-shaven hair, he looks the part of a fire-breathing foot soldier. Pickering's Macbeth seems accustomed to stomping his way from victory to victory, beating opponents into submission and crushing obstacle after obstacle.
Playing opposite Pickering's Macbeth - both figuratively and literally - is Lia Mortensen's lovely and petite Lady, elegant but with an icy intellectualism and a vicious cunning. With her hair worn up in an elaborate style and with make-up and jewelry and gowns as if she were about to attend a formal and official evening ceremony, Mortensen's Lady Macbeth exudes beauty and grace, her sophistication and eloquence a decided antithesis to the brute force and plain speaking of her soldierly husband. The couple make a dangerous pair in a combustible combination, and Buckley directs them with vivid flair: Pickering's Macbeth alternates between fits and starts of bull-headed drive toward supposed destiny and pangs of conscience that strike him like physical attacks; and Mortensen's slinking seductress Lady conceals her fiery ambition and lusty physicality beneath an icy and prudent exterior, sometimes belied by her flashing eyes or her whispered venom. Mortensen's diminutive but beautiful Lady is something of a manipulative viper, posing and concealing herself, masking her tactics with her beauty, using her allure and sexuality to break down Pickering's Macbeth. Mortensen's lady, confident throughout the first half, even becomes thrilled - perhaps sexually - with her and Macbeth's cunning and ruthlessness, and her character remains consistent until the madness scene, in which Mortensen's Lady seems to drift along, crushed by guilt into the wreckage of a babbling schoolgirl.
Buckley's production, modernized to a fairly contemporary but unspecified time, features wool sweaters and slacks, boots and ski caps for soldiers, usually in black, plus formal business attire for the King and his court. Duncan and his retinue seem something like a corporate Chief Executive Officer and his management team, with the awarding of Macbeth and the promised succession to Malcolm businesslike and professional. An ingeniously effective sound design enhances this production, perhaps more so than could special effects, a more extravagant set, or elaborate costumes. A vivid soundscape, eerie and complex, complements the mood of the staging and enhances the tragedy. Original music, mostly thumping percussion and the wail of bagpipes, is threaded among authentic Celtic arrangements and an array of evocative sound effects, from an electronic hum to an escalating bass-heavy undertow like a rising alarm. A musical sound effect theme is developed for each of the characters, like the animalistic noises - amplified roars, growls, hisses, screeches, shrieks, and hisses - that accompany the misshapen witches upon the blasted heath. A recurring high-pitched flute - as melodic and mournful as the Lady herself - serves as the haunting theme for Mortensen's Lady Macbeth, and Pickering's Macbeth's presence is scored with an electronically rhythmic rumbling and the pulsating of a heart that in the final battle sequences is a reverberating and quickened pound.
Pickering, doubling as fight choreographer, presents a violent descent for Macbeth in his murder sprees, as the new King descends more into the burden of guilt unlike his wife, who quickly slips into madness. Macbeth's rule, harsh and reflexive, reflects what the man has become, especially in contrast to the noble dignity of Banquo. Pickering's despairing speech to the dead Lady - "tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow" - is spoken in heaving half-sobs because the suddenly frightened Macbeth has lost not just his Lady, but the intellectual, advising side of his alter ego. His subsequent decision to fight and die like a lion carries with it a characteristic hubris, and his concluding duel with Macduff is a lengthy but at times frenzied clash. Overall, Buckley executes her forceful and spare conception of Macbeth with an admirable restraint, and the result - with much credit due to Pickering and Mortensen - is a laser-focused examination of ambition and a brutally raw portrayal of the burdens of guilt.