Music, murder and mayhem

Battles fought with light sabers. Sexy witches as cheerleaders. A severed head singing a solo. The Troubadour Theater Company’s “Fleetwood Macbeth!” at Miles Memorial Playhouse in Santa Monica is not your average Shakespeare play.

Anyone who has experienced a Troubadour production knows that, for these evolved clowns, wackiness is the chosen aesthetic, and in pursuit of that end, anything and everything goes.

Guided by founder and jester extraordinaire Matt Walker, the group has become noted in recent years for its madcap adaptations of Shakespeare, set to contemporary pop music. Past productions include “12th Dog Night” and “A Midsummer Saturday Night’s Fever Dream” -- Shakespeare’s classics done to the music of Three Dog Night and the Bee Gees, respectively.

This recent effort interlaces Shakespeare’s sanguinary Scottish play with the music of Fleetwood Mac, a marriage that, while at times attenuated, is mostly a triumph of supreme silliness.

A live band punctuates these energetic yet laid-back proceedings. The performers are nimble (considering the demanding physical nature of the show, they have to be), but on the few occasions when cues are missed or lines flubbed, Walker leaps on stage to flag and penalize the erring parties.

That casual attitude extends to the program. The technical contributions, including the whimsical costumes, are lumped together under acknowledgments for “Stuff we needed made or built.”

Actors clomp around in huge prosthetic rubber feet -- a near equivalent to oversized clown shoes, and an effective statement of intent about where this evening is headed. Outlandishness is the order of the day. Granted, sometimes the humor is overblown. Outrageous puns trigger groans from the audience, and some of the running gags run right into the ground.

On the whole, though, this is prime Troubadour stuff, and one of the group’s most musically ambitious enterprises to date.

Heading up a consistently funny cast, Morgan Rusler is a hilarious Macbeth, well-matched by Walker’s picturesquely gory Banquo and Charles Klausmeyer’s Sean Connery-esque Duncan. Short and round and full-voiced, Lisa Valenzuela is a Stevie Nicks sound-alike whose Lady Macbeth is wickedly adorable.

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‘Fleetwood Macbeth!’

Where: Miles Playhouse, 1130 Lincoln Blvd., Santa Monica

When: Fridays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.

Ends: Aug. 2

Price: $15

Contact: (310) 979-7196

Running time: 2 hours