High Hopes Utterly Dashed

Rating: 3/10 (17 June 2016)

This version of the play represents opportunity squandered. An excellent cast is wasted on this vision of the play that takes too many liberties with the source material: rearranging scenes, dropping characters, and perhaps trying to be too historically accurate to the setting rather than the stage production. While the Scottish Play isn't exactly a yuk-fest comedy, the director has wrung every last drop of levity out of the script, leaving it unnecessarily bleak: where's the porter, cursing as he stumbles out of bed to answer the midnight knock? Where's the badinage between Lady Macduff and her son before the murderers descend? Where's the exchange between Malcom and Macduff, when the prince tests Macduff's loyalties? And where in the heck is Donaldbain? My most strident complaint, expressed by others here on the review board, too, is the delivery of the lines. The intensity and emotion are there, thanks to a superb set f actors, but sometimes the script requires volume (and not just during the slow-mo battle scenes. Every single line in this thing is delivered like a couple having a lover's spat in a library: fierce whispers and swiveling eyeballs.