What do a man dressed as a rabbit and uncle sam have in common?

They both appear in the MacBeth currently playing at St. Ann's. I didn't think it made any sense either.

A friend of my (or my parents) once quoted a proffesor of their's and said that a play must be a "of a piece". The friend didn't know what that meant at the time by as they acumulated experience in theater they came to understand what was implied. This production was absolutely not "of a piece" all the disparate parts did not add up to a whole.

Aside from the rabbit, other audience members asked each other as I ran out of the theater "what was going on with lady macbeth, what she like a geisa or something?" I think the answer is NO. She was attempting to performing in a highly stylized way that did not fit in with the rest of the cast, except that they were just as stiff, but with less purpose. The costumer also mistakenly put her in a komono.

The show ran 2 hours which is usually short for MacBeth. But if they had been able to cut out the unnecesary pauses they could have cut out another half hour and made the evening only a torturous 90 minutes. I'm not sure if it was the cultural differences in acting style or if they were just bad, but everyone's idea of acting involved standing very still and whispering very intensely without and variation in volume or prosody. I don't think I've ever seen a more boring MacBeth.

If you want to see a good highly nuisanced MacBeth go see the one with Patrick Stewart. Or even go ahead and rent a movie version, doesn't matter which one they're all better than this play.