Summary 
Heavily edited tragedy told with Oriental flourishes and accented by inventive sound and musical effects. At just ninety minutes and without an intermission, the story moves swiftly, sacrificing plot complexity and character depth for brevity and clarity of story-telling. The effect may seem like Macbeth Lite but remains a lean and ethereal - if less than muscular - evocation of the dangers of ambition.
Design
Directed by Carmen Khan. Set by Adam Riggar. Costumes by Vickie Esposito. Lights by Jerold R. Forsyth. Compositions by Melissa Dunphy. Fights by J. Alex Cordaro.
Cast
John Greenbaum (Macduff), Ron Heneghan (Macbeth), John Jarboe (Malcolm), Christie Parker (Lady Macbeth), Kathryn Raines (Messenger), Kate Russell (Ensemble), Johnny Smith (Murderer/Ross), Mary Tuomanen (Witch/Messenger), Jarrod Yuskauskas (Fleance/Messenger), John Zak (Banquo).
Analysis
Carmen Khan's sparse Macbeth clocks in at an intermission-less one hour thirty minutes at Philadelphia Shakespeare Theatre. Khan and her ensemble of ten present the tragedy of ambition not so much with breakneck speed but with elegant and threadbare precision, the cast clad head-to-toe in black and wielding curved blades and scimitars to evoke an Oriental or southeastern Asian motif. Khan, too, wields a sharp sword, completely cutting the character of Duncan as well as the comic relief of the Porter, trimming the trios of witches and hired murderers to just one each, and limiting the execution of Duncan, the ghost of Banquo, and the assault on Lady Macduff's home to unseen off-stage horrors. Khan's black-box production, the audience close on three sides of the stage, features an emerald green scrim upstage and a bowl of water upon a makeshift altar platform, and focuses intensely upon Macbeth and his Lady. Even Malcolm's 4.3 entreaties of Macduff are trimmed, but Khan provides continuity through ingenious use of sound effects.
The visceral sound design, again Oriental in tone, uses Asian-sounding timpani and drums, tubular bells and chimes, and chords from strings, while the ensemble rotates upstage to provide an eerie array of effects ranging from chanting witches and playing children to a moaning wind and a bubbling sea. The effect is eerie and hypnotic and enhances the ghostly storytelling, although perhaps more appropriate for one of the ethereal maritime romances - say, The Tempest or Pericles - than for a sanguine and muscular tragedy over-brimming with violence, murder, and witchcraft.
Khan begins her darkly lit Macbeth with stylistically posed stage pictures of combat, showing soldiers in black caught in freeze-framed warfare. A single faceless witch, scuttling and misshapen, clad all in black with her face concealed beneath a dark hood, carries a burlap sack and a long staff from which dangles three skulls. She shuffles to center stage 1.3 as the combat comes to an end and Lady Macbeth appears, as if summoned by the witch herself, to lurk at the edge of stage right. The witch then confronts the victorious Macbeth and Banquo as a bloody baby doll spills from the burlap sack and falls to the stage, and when she faces Banquo, he staggers backward and falls, then cowers from her creepy power. After the prophesies, Ron Heneghan's handsome and bearded anti-hero Macbeth soliloquizes, his hand upon the handle of his sword as drums pound just offstage as Lady Macbeth enters to read his 1.5 letter. Christie Parker's Lady, raven-haired and beautiful but wounded in expression and haunted of eye, wears a long-sleeved black dress and fingerless gloves, kneeling as she summons spirits - "unsex me here" - in a witchlike incantation. Lights rise as Heneghan's Macbeth returns and embraces her from behind, and Parker's sexy Lady turns to face him eye to eye and mouth to mouth as if physically infecting him cat-like with her own murderous ambition.
Heneghan's Macbeth, tall and earnest, is the cornerstone of the production, and he at times excels, but Parker's slinking Lady is the mercurial star, all breathless plotting and sly machinations before quickly flaming out as she becomes ravaged with guilt. She greets the guests at Dunsinane 1.6 while her husband lurks in shadowy darkness with his conscience, his resolve returning only at her 1.7 prodding - "screw your courage to the sticking place" - and the lighting onstage glows red for the pivotal "is this a dagger I see before me" scene. Parker's Lady wears black over a clingy scarlet cocktail dress, and she goads Macbeth into regicide, although the character of Duncan is completely cut. Without the physical presence of the King - perhaps as a sympathetic victim - the murder becomes emotionally abstract and loses a great deal of theatrical power, even though Heneghan's Macbeth staggers back onstage 2.2 with bloody hands, inadvertently smearing his face a dripping red. The 2.3 drums are powerfully loud to represent Macduff's banging at the gate - "Macbeth doth murder sleep" - although Khan also excises the comic relief of the Porter to rush into Macduff's discovery - "horror!" - of the murder of the King. Guests rush onstage from every entrance, the backdrop scrim now revealing crimson images of hell. Macbeth's telling confession that he has killed the suspected assassins immediately arouses suspicion, and Parker's Lady feigns a faint, shooting a glare at her husband as she is helped from the stage, while Heneghan's defiant Macbeth faces the concerned Banquo with hands on hips.
Khan evokes Macbeth's freefall descent into evil with characteristic brevity as the newly crowned King moves away from his Lady in 3.2 - "not just thus but to be safely thus" - he clad in royal purple and she all in bloody red. To the chiming tones of dual Oriental musical instruments onstage, Heneghan's Macbeth's voice breaks as he sags to his knees - "full of scorpions is my mind" - then sends a single assassin after Banquo and Fleance. As Banquo falls 3.3 and Fleance flees - the two of them a difficult assignment for just one attacker with a knife - the now white-masked witch appears onstage to drag Banquo with her off to hell. Banquo does not reappear as a ghost within the 3.4 banquet, the image only in Macbeth's and the audience's imagination as Heneghan stares just offstage past smiling guests with goblets. The guests scatter in panic as Heneghan's Macbeth draws his knife and roars at the unseen ghost, the scene effective but less visceral than it could be with a visible ghostly manifestation.
Parker's suddenly overwhelmed Lady - Khan's rapid pace allows for little or no transition - washes her hands at the altar bowl, recoiling as the water runs red as if with blood, and the 4.1 prophesies are delivered in eerie chants from the ensemble along with the wheezing witch - "beware Macduff" - in a chilling rise of both volume and intensity. The witch wields a baby doll with which she taunts the childless Macbeth, and Khan cleverly segues to 4.2 with Macduff embracing the doll in a pool of light as if it is one of his murdered children. Macduff's 4.3 interaction with Malcolm is edited into a brief soliloquy followed by Parker's 5.1 rambling as the now crazed Lady, cradling then dropping the baby doll: "who would have thought the old man had so much blood in him." Her horror at her own actions - "what's done cannot be undone" - is the production's most searingly emotional moment. Heneghan's sneering Macbeth appears almost drunken in 5.3, barking orders and belittling messengers. His finest theatrical moment comes with news of the Lady' suicide, as Macbeth realizes he is now completely alone with his terror of what the future holds - "tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow" - as well as the horrors of his guilt. The rapid descent of the Macbeths is well performed but unconvincingly quick, with Macbeth's achievement of the crown clearly not worth the prices paid. Heneghan's Macbeth battles four invaders at once 5.7, wildly swinging his sword in fierce abandon while wearing a black vest like Kevlar battle armor. He succumbs to the onslaught from Macduff to the pound of drumming and sound effects as the white-masked witch - who easily could now be Lady Macbeth herself - emerges to take him, as she did Banquo, to hell.
Khan's brief but evocative production concludes with the image of Malcolm immersing his arms into the bloody water in the bowl at the altar, the entire cast onstage to observe the beginnings of perhaps another bloody reign, including Macbeth and his Lady far upstage in a pool of crimson light.