Macbeth (review)

Perseverance Theatre's production of Macbeth made for a unique, enjoyable, and first-rate theatrical experience, more than demonstrating why the company was invited to participate in the mammoth event "Shakespeare in Washington," part of "Shakespeare for a New Generation," a national theatre initiative sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts in cooperation with Arts Midwest. Macbeth had all the trademarks for which the Juneau, Alaska-based theatre company, founded in 1979, has become famous. True to the company's mission to explore native themes, this production contextualized Shakespeare's play in Alaska's indigenous Tlingit (pronounced tlinkit) culture. Since 1971 when the aboriginal land claim of the Tlingit was settled, efforts to preserve their language and culture have been underway. The Tlingit Indians, who have resided in southeastern Alaska for over 10,000 years, divide themselves into two tribes or moieties—the Eagles and the Ravens; this duality is only one of several dualities that comprises their balanced social structure, traditions, and overall way of life. The factious world of Macbeth provided an appropriate setting to explore the internal strife faced by this culturally embattled group.

In addition to forging powerful and surprising parallels between Scottish and Tlingit life, Perseverance's production impressed viewers with its relatively young but talented cast, authentic costumes, music, dance, and visual design. The performance began in total darkness. Sounds of rippling water and powerful drumbeats located the impending action outdoors and warned of the fatal events about to unfold. Lighting effects and an original soundtrack of native instruments would continue to enhance the production until its final moments, imbuing it with mood and emotional depth. Robert H. Davis's artfully sparse set was constructed out of bare wood, which was appropriate given the Tlingit region's climate (a temperate rainforest that produces many trees) and the subsequent cultural importance of this material. Natives used wood to make their homes, clothes, utensils, and more. This vital resource also informed the production's costume-design and props. Macbeth, Banquo, and others wore hand-made wooden armor and wielded weapons carved from wood. The set also featured two totem poles painted with red and black tribal images resembling faces—much like the totem poles that adorn the facades of some natives' homes to this day.

More than half of the script was translated into Tlingit, a language spoken today by only a few hundred Alaskans. For those less familiar with the play, a screen displaying English subtitles was placed downstage right. Macbeth and Lady Macbeth delivered their soliloquies and spoke to one another in English; everyone else, including Macbeth and Lady Macbeth when in the company of others, spoke Tlingit. The frequent switching back and forth between English and Tlingit heightened spectators' awareness of the central role language played in the natives' conflict. The production's linguistic duality ultimately transformed the play's succession crisis into a cultural crisis, pitting those who would preserve the Tlingit culture and native tongue (Macduff, Donalbain, Malcolm, etc.) against those who would not (Macbeth and Lady Macbeth), with the former prevailing, of course.

Macbeth (Jake Waid) and Banquo (Gene Tagaban) were well cast; in a sense, Waid, an assimilated English speaker, visibly taller with shorn hair, and Tagan, a Tlingit speaker, slight in size with unrestrained hair beyond his shoulders—physically embodied the conflict between those who would destroy and those who would preserve Tlingit culture. The...