As the lights dimmed at Sand Harbor, the cheerful sounds of families splashing on the nearby beach were immediately at odds with the eerie, disconcerting first moments of Macbeth.
The three Weird Sisters—witches straight out of a horror film, with their visible, cracking bones and white faces hidden by long, ghastly locks of white hair—recited their unsettling prophecy in a dark wood, amid a chaotic storm. Instantly, I was transfixed. Within moments, I was magically transported from a tranquil Tahoe summer evening to a chilly night in Scotland, and it was clear this summer’s Lake Tahoe Shakespeare Festival would be another masterful achievement.
The sometimes-impenetrable archaic dialogue, the formalities of nobility, the history of Scottish rebellion … any such barriers to understanding Shakespeare’s words fall away here. It’s immediately clear that this is a tale of corruption, one that feels eerily familiar in this moment of political unease. Shakespeare’s tragedy of perverted ambition, the claims of divine rights, and the descent into madness and tyranny hit particularly hard, with Tahoe’s darkening sky only fueling the unrest that grows as the story unfolds.
In case you never read this one in high school or are unfamiliar with “The Scottish Play,” Macbeth explores the consequences of the lust for power. Set in 1500s Scotland, it centers on Macbeth (played by Jeffrey C. Hawkins), a Scottish general who has just successfully led troops to defeat a rebellion by a traitor in the nobility’s midst. He returns home a hero, with his commander, Banquo (Neil Brookshire) at his side, and is named Thane (similar to a lord) of Cawdor, as the Weird Sisters prophesized. When they then suggest, before Macbeth and Banquo, that Macbeth will “be king hereafter,” he shares his visions of grandeur with his wife, Lady Macbeth (Cassandra Bissell), whose ambitions might even surpass his.
Lady Macbeth convinces her husband to murder King Duncan (David Anthony Smith) and take his rightful place on the throne. He does so—and it’s at this moment when his hallucinations and increasing paranoia begin to take hold.
When Duncan’s sons, Malcolm (Dakotah Brown), the rightful heir to the throne, and Donalbain (Evan Stevens), flee the country in fear for their lives, their flight is seen as an admission of guilt for their father’s murder. This leaves Duncan’s next of kin, Macbeth, to assume the throne as King of Scotland. The prophecy is completed, leading to one question: Was the prophecy the cause or the result of these events?
As Macbeth takes hold of power, he grows increasingly paranoid about the tenuousness of his hold on it—also a familiar theme today. Violence begets violence as he seeks to extinguish any chance that Banquo will share what he knows about the prophecy and cast light on Macbeth’s guilt.
Macbeth becomes reckless, pursuing Banquo and Duncan’s nobleman, MacDuff (Joe Wegner), as well as other innocents, all in the name of maintaining his hold on power. All the while, his grip on reality keeps loosening. Lady Macbeth, for her part, also wrestles with her demons, sleepwalking and proclaiming sorrow over her guilt, crying out the infamous, “Out, damn spot!”
Sara Bruner, the LTSF’s producing artistic director, once again directs this year’s Shakespearean tale, demonstrating why she earned the Princess Grace Award for directing. Every aspect of the production feeds our understanding and contributes to the feeling of a slow, miserable descent into psychosis. The harsh, flashing lights, the eerily screeching music, the monotone set, the stage that zigzags and overlaps at odd angles, and costuming that feels more at home in a dark alley than a castle … it all works together with beautiful simplicity to convey a dark, nightmarish quality and a pervasive, growing paranoia that is overtaking the land and the minds of those in it. It’s easy to see why LTSF executive cirector Joe Atack told me that this is his favorite set design the festival has ever had.
The performances, unsurprisingly, are also pitch-perfect, from the horrifying performances of the Weird Sisters (Kelsey Angel Baehrens, Jonathan Contrera and Ángela Utrera) to the heartbreaking grief displayed by Wegner when MacDuff’s unimaginable loss is revealed, and, of course, to Hawkins’ portrayal of Macbeth as a man possessed—for whom we can, somehow, find pity.
As the lights returned and strains of Tears for Fears’ “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” began to play, I was left feeling as if I’d awakened from a nightmare, but also uneasy with how the passage of time has not as yet rendered such a tale impossible to believe.
The Lake Tahoe Shakespeare Festival presents Macbeth three to four nights each week through Aug. 23 at the Warren Edward Trepp Stage at Sand Harbor State Park, at 2005 Highway 28, in Incline Village. The festival also presents The Heart of Robin Hood, an adventure tale first staged in 2011, two to three days per week through Aug. 21. Tickets start at $34, with discounts, and one $10 state park entrance pass per vehicle is required for admission to the park. For tickets and information, go to laketahoeshakespeare.com.