Shakespearean Tragedy

Sometimes when things go wrong, they really go wrong. The Macbeths found this out, and anyone who can snag a ticket to see the new sold-out “Macbeth,” with its powerhouse cast at the Joseph Papp Public Theater, will find this out too.

“Macbeth” stars Alec Baldwin and Angela Bassett. Under the direction of George C. Wolfe (“Angels in America,” “Bring in ‘Da Noise, Bring in ‘Da Funk”), who possesses one of the most versatile and energetic imaginations in the American theater, the actors are curiously adrift--concept-less, isolated from each other and from the text. Enacted on a brown chunk of wood on the stage of the Public’s Martinson Hall, Wolfe’s “Macbeth” is so detached that it’s difficult to guess even at what the director was envisioning.

Wolfe sets the play in a bare and polluted apocalyptic landscape, very “Mad Max,” where everyone wears leather and looks as if he or she has just emerged from a dust storm.

The costumes, by Toni-Leslie James, are ridiculous enough that you have to spend energy just trying to ignore them. Baldwin begins in a V-neck vest, with what looks like dead cat fur on the shoulders and a black camisole and manly triangle of chest hair peeking out from underneath. He looks like a refuge from a lost “Star Trek” episode. The three Weird Sisters are zonked-out and smeared-up messes; it’s as if the Manson girls had just completed Navy SEAL training. An icky gloom extends even to the play’s one comic character--the drunken porter--who looks like a menacing skinhead. The sisters writhe quite a bit, but as with most of the pronounced and insistent acting onstage at the Public, one is never quite sure what is motivating them.

Despite much sound and fury from both Baldwin and Bassett, the production is actually bland. Wolfe never establishes exactly what dynamic there is between Shakespeare’s power couple from hell. When Macbeth first returns from the battlefield to plot the murder of King Duncan (Rocco Sisto) with his wife, he picks her up, holding her vertically as he might a stiff plank, then cradles her without emotion. These moves look like mechanical choreography, without heart or feeling. And certainly there is no heat between these actors; they seem not to be related.

Most confusing of all is why this Macbeth and Lady Macbeth bother to perform the nasty deeds they do. They are both wrecks as soon as they kill the Scottish king. For Macbeth, this makes sense. But Lady Macbeth is the Queen of Denial--”Consider it not so deeply” and “What’s done is done” are her watchwords. But it’s as if Bassett doesn’t want Baldwin to hyperventilate alone, and she accelerates her distress right away, just to keep up.

With her fabulous bone structure and black hair piled on high like a Dream Girl’s, Bassett enunciates so ferociously that it looks as if she’s doing exercises to loosen her jaw. Her performance is absurdly mannered--she performs her “unsex me” speech while practicing slow-motion karate to atonal music. Baldwin is less bizarre but equally adrift. He has a way of fixing the audience with an apologetic glance before beginning a monologue.

Overacting is so de rigueur that one actor, the usually good Sisto, chews the scenery in not one but three different parts. As Banquo, the friend Macbeth kills and is then haunted by, Liev Schreiber is quite good, especially as a ghost. He appears to Macbeth through a huge gilt mirror and taunts him by being slightly amused at his breakdown.

The directorial idea that comes through clearest is a suggestion that Malcolm (Michael Hall), son of the slain Duncan and a prince who is “yet unknown to woman,” is in love with Macduff (Jeffrey Nordling). It’s not that interesting, but at least for a while someone is wanting something for a discernible reason.

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* “Macbeth,” Joseph Papp Public Theater, 425 Lafayette St., New York. (800) 432-7250.