Friday, January 11, 2008

Toil and Trouble

This is interesting and very, very cool sounding. Teller (of Penn and Teller fame) does Shakespeare.

"I thought it might be a very interesting idea to do a production in which all the magic stuff fooled audiences so that they'd be in the exact same position as Macbeth. I know it's a pretty cerebral idea, the idea that we're trying to see what it's like to be Macbeth. But," he added with palpable delight, "where it leads you is some very weird places."

"Macbeth," as envisioned by Teller, is not, as in many versions, a downer with a glum title character. "I just think that pushes things in the wrong direction," he said. The right direction? "It's a thrill ride," he said. "The play was written essentially to make James I happy, and he was a paranoid schizophrenic who believed in witchcraft. So 'Macbeth' is a wonderful paranoid schizophrenic fantasy and everyone is having a jolly good fiendish time. If there's one thing we'll try not to miss is how much fun this play is."

More from Teller here; start with the 12/24/06 post, "Macbeth."