Theater Reviews : Vaulting Ambition Tempts Operatic-Scale ‘Macbeth’

FULLERTON — Most university graduate students are restricted to playing out their ideas and theses on paper. University graduates studying directing, though, have the stage for their playground. Cal State Fullerton graduate director James R. Taulli is using almost everything at his disposal on the Little Theatre stage for his “Macbeth.”

His stage pictures are appropriately big and dark and threatening for the Shakespeare that comes the closest to a true horror tale, complete with witches.

In his program notes, Taulli cites opera as an influence, and we can see it in his positioning of Jeff Swarthout’s full-voiced Macbeth downstage, speaking his soliloquies in aria-like direct address.

We see it again in the scene where Macbeth’s apparitions emerge as a giant upstage wall slides open in the best tradition of Christopher Alden’s opera works. These sights are framed in a jagged proscenium design by Nola Jackson, suggesting Hell cracking the earth’s surface.

At least that’s Taulli’s idea in his notes. But the playing out of this particular “Macbeth” insists that the Scottish general is literally controlled by the witches, a puppet on evil’s strings. It’s hard to tell which is the bigger problem--the notion or its execution.

In its unorthodox opening, this production shows the witches (Paris Bradstreet, Erin Saporito and Karen Wight) animating a phalanx of soldiers into bloody battle--a long one, with very fake and overly deliberate sword-fighting, care of John Robert Beardsley.

Later, the witches (wearing masks) serve as the murderers of Banquo and Macduff’s wife and child. They constantly lurk about the stage, cackling. Witches as comic relief takes a director’s concept too far.

Taulli surely doesn’t mean them to be comic, but that’s the unintended effect; that, and the denaturing of “Macbeth’s” political theme, which is of a man’s “vaulting ambition” spurred by his equally ambitious wife and overtaking them both.

A modern audience all too aware of power politics has a hard time swallowing the idea that characters are pawns of destiny.

Even when Scotland is supposedly returned to peaceful reason at the end, Taulli imagines that the witches are still in control. It might work in an opera, but not in the play Shakespeare wrote.

Swarthout’s attack on the role is impressive--big, commanding, and finally, imploding. He stands apart from the rest of the cast both by his glistening shaved head and his care for the poetry, which is only undone by sound designer John Fisher’s louder effects.

Wight is nearly as impressive in the role of Lady Macbeth, eloquently standing in Saturday for Eve Himmelheber (and also this Saturday matinee) while playing her usual witch role in those scenes she could (which is why Saturday’s performance sometimes had only two witches at the caldron).

Eric Bishop lets loose with some operatic fury as Macduff, and Randall Shorts (replacing Gregory Beirne this Saturday matinee) enunciates his Malcolm to the last row. But some of their colleagues aren’t up to Taulli’s operatic scale, including Edgar Schulz’ meek-sounding Duncan.

Abel Zeballos’ costumes stand out from the design’s overall blackness, which, along with Susan Hallman’s ambitious lights, create some terrific depth-of-field images. While the eye is sometimes impressed, the mind has to wonder what’s really going on.

“Macbeth,” Cal State Fullerton Little Theatre, 800 N. State College Blvd. Thursday-Friday, 8 p.m.; Saturday, 2:30 and 8 p.m.; Sunday, 5 p.m. $6-$8. (714) 773-3371. Running time: 2 hours, 30 minutes. Jeff Swarthout: Macbeth

Eve Himmelheber/Karen Wight: Lady Macbeth

Eric Bishop: Macduff

Gregory Beirne/Randall Shorts: Malcolm

Paris Bradstreet: First Witch/Porter/Murderer/Attendant

Erin Saporito: Second Witch/Murderer/Attendant

Karen Wight: Third Witch/Murderer/Attendant

Edgar Schulz: Duncan

Paul Pederson: Banquo

Deborah Chicurel-Conow: Lady Macduff/Doctor

Sara Dean Hess: Macduff’s Son

Brad Symons: Ross

A Cal State Fullerton Theatre and Dance Department production of Shakespeare’s tragedy. Directed by James R. Taulli.