Macbeth

The box office for Dragon Theater's "Macbeth" in Redwood City actually warns you in advance that the show contains both murder and witches.

It had well better, that's probably what most of the audience is showing up for. Amazingly, in the 20-year history of this theater, they have never before staged a Shakespeare play.

The break with tradition happens for the sake of director/actor duo Roneet Aliza Rahamim and Max Tachis' barebones Scottish Play, performed on a stage almost as empty as the barren heath on which the three witches meet.

The costumes are plain working-class garb with little to distinguish most of them. Macbeth and Duncan's crowns are just tangled messes of wire. Even the show's many battle scenes and murders mostly eschew weapons in favor of bare hands.

Scotland is a grim and meager place at the Dragon, for all of the fighting and dying that goes on over it. Only the horror show lighting and startling offstage foley sound effects inject sudden, violent signs of life.

For anyone who didn't do the reading assignment, this 1606 tragedy chronicles the rise and fall of Macbeth (Tasi Alabastro, from "Stupid Fucking Bird" at City Lights last year), a medieval Scottish lord who dares anything for power but loses everything in the process, including perhaps his soul.

Alabastro is a surprising casting choice thanks to his warm, inviting, teddy bear-like demeanor. Until he finally gets his hands dirty with barroom-like brawling at the end of the final act, it's hard to imagine such a genial fellow as a battle-hardened veteran or a murderous tyrant.

This is not to say that Alabastro is totally unsuited for the role, as his anxious eyes and tentative, disbelieving optimism make Macbeth seem pitiable during soliloquies.

The great thane looks less like a man seizing his destiny so much as someone about to be clobbered over the head with it and not sure which way to duck. It's hard not to feel bad for him in spite of everything.

The problem is that this Macbeth seems almost entirely passive. That resigns the play to the prospect that fiendish supernatural powers direct the action rather than the king's own decisions.

Whenever mounting "Macbeth" it must be tempting to expand on the three witches (Sarah Haas, Troy Johnson, and co-director Rahamim herself). After all, they're the fun stuff.

But it's not usually a good idea. Overexposing them–here they're creeping around behind curtains n almost every scene–erodes their potent mystery.

This show punches things up a bit by adding witch goddess Hecate into the mix, a role that seems to be cut in most productions. Maya Greenberg lends a creepy, German Expressionist horror vibe to the part, but it doesn't solve the problem.

Tachis, our other director (lately in "Frankenstein," also at City Lights a few years ago), first plays ill-fated King Duncan, which is just weird. He seems such a virile go-getter of a king that it's hard to imagine him walking so blithely into all of these betrayals.

He switches to playing tragic hero Macduff in later acts, casting that makes a hell of a lot more sense.

Doubling, tripling, and even quadrupling of parts throughout "Macbeth" is a necessity with an eight-person cast, but role changes happen so fast and so often and with such minimal changes in wardrobe that losing track of who is who feels inevitable.

Other than Macbeth himself, only Maria Marquis consistently plays one part–Lady Macbeth–through the show. And thank the saints, because she's a virtual roman candle, vital and powerful and deeply earnest.

Rather than just an iron lady, Marquis is often vulnerable and exposed even during her most aggressive moments.

But she has certain stamina that makes the murderous ambitions credible in spite of her sometime hesitancy.

Even though there's barely any set–just wooden pallets and some curtains–the constant shuffling and rearranging of these bits between scenes gets distracting.

Similarly, much of the cast has a habit of shuffling themselves and making barely-there gestures with their hands that seem tentative and weird.

It's cool to see a "Macbeth" that unmoors itself from assumptions and takes these kinds of risks. But the results usually don't seem fully realized.

"Macbeth" plays through April 7 at the Dragon Theatre, 2120 Broadway in Redwood City. For tickets and information, call 650-493-2006 or visit DragonProductions.net