STAGE REVIEW : Marowitz Retools ‘Macbeth’: Out, Out, Damned Plot

The first thing it’s important to remember about Charles Marowitz’s “A Macbeth” is that it is this season’s inaugural lab production at the Odyssey Theatre Ensemble--a place, according to a leaflet from the theater, where “plays are often more experimental, more avant-garde, more likely to balance on the edge of the unusual and unconventional.” That said, let’s add that “A Macbeth” fits roughly half the description.

Call it a harmless if not wildly stimulating 90-minute intellectual workout for the initiated. It helps if you know your “Macbeth,” which isn’t too taxing a request. Marowitz’s take on the play is a telescopic view of events. It’s as if he pulled apart the Shakespeare, threw the pieces in the air, retrieved the bigger ones, and rearranged them to approximate the original.

In short, he presents a condensed, coiled, generic “Macbeth” with emphasis on its proclivity for black magic. Taken in this spirit, it does indeed “balance on the edge of the unusual and unconventional,” but its experimentation is more apres than avant-garde--perhaps because the gestation of this remodeled Shakespeare dates back to the late ‘60s.

Marowitz, who also directs, is sufficiently cunning to call on every theatrick in the book: Puppets, masks, alter-egos, crunching fight choreography, bloodied heads and a bare stage lined with upturned witches’ brooms and backed by a crowd of scarecrows.

The actors, dressed in monastic tunics (muted, color-coded designs by Dean Harris with Judith Bartnick), speak the speeches well and move in a clean gestural ballet.

It’s intriguing to follow the plot behind the stylized reconstruction; to watch Bairbre Dowling open the show by piercing a puppet’s eyes until they weep emblematic tears of blood; to react to the clash of metal in Larry Henderson’s fight staging; to listen to triple Macbeths (Robert Thaler with alter-egos David Asher and Greg Reges) speaking together or by turns. Macbeth’s paranoia is the paranoia of all dictators, inevitably guilty of the violence of power. You can make a stab at his most obvious counterpart du jour . (An anti-war message is equally implicit.)

The effect is stark, brooding, admirable and uninvolving. Dowling makes a statuesque yet strangely flavorless Lady Macbeth. Thaler self-consciously strives for poignancy and Bruce Gooch’s Banquo says little, though his eyes and bludgeoned head speak volumes.

Thanks to the disassembling of the script, all have become abstract and mechanical carriers of impressions--nocturnal dwellers of disembodied subliminal themes.

The adapter/director has explained that his idea with this retooling of “Macbeth” is to elicit a new response through a collage that “transmits the experience of the play through the eyes of the central protagonist.” It includes other psychological and parapsychological complexities, relating chiefly to Lady Macbeth and the witches, but the goal is modest if pretentious and within the paradox of those boundaries Marowitz achieves it.

This is resolutely “A Macbeth” for the brain: cold, clever, calculated, passionless--a telegraphic “Macbeth” whose dissections serve roughly the same purpose as a crossword puzzle. It is a way to pass the time in a cerebrally absorbing fashion, without danger of any permanent intrusion.

* “A Macbeth,” Odyssey Theatre Ensemble, 2055 S. Sepulveda Blvd., West Los Angeles. Wednesday-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7 p.m. Ends March 31. $15.50-$19.50; (213) 477-2055.

‘A Macbeth’

Bairbre Dowling Lady Macbeth

Robert Thaler Macbeth

David Asher Macbeth No. 1

Greg Reges Macbeth No. 2

Jack Beckerman Duncan

Bruce Gooch Banquo

David Paul Needles Macduff

Larry Henderson Malcolm

Marc Weishaus Witch No. 1

Caroline Carrigan Witch No. 2

Dana Hooley Witch No. 3

Shakespeare’s classic, directed and freely adapted by Charles Marowitz. Producer Ron Sossi. Assistant directors Daniel Passer, Theresa Shiban. Sets Geryd Pojawa. Lights Lynne Peryon. Costumes Dean Harris with Judith Bartnick. Masks Lisa Cooperman. Sound design Steve Barr. Stage manager Adrian Ho. Fight director Larry Henderson.