Review: Macbeth by Austin Drama Club
by Michael Meigs

Sarah England's opening turn as the witch in Macbeth for Austin Drama Club felt so, so right. She's one witch for three, huddled over a trash can lit from below and sporadically spouting CO2 smoke. Her cutting voice and spooky moves make you understand that she believes, really believes that there is dark magic at work here.

That belief is the underpinning for the Austin Drama Club, an almost inexplicable group of devotees to the dark art of theatre, folks intent on pondering many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore.

Or not so forgotten. ADC under Japhy Fernandes' leadership is in its fourth season now in their quasi-hideout on East 7th street between the Texas State Cemetery and Huston -Tillotson University, and they are well into a twelve-play season for 2010. This Macbeth is the first of eight major works by Shakespeare. They did Oedipus Rex in January and in non-Shakespeare months they plan to do Brecht's Mother Courage (next month), Peter Shaffer's Equus (September) and Molière's Tartuffe in November.

No other theatre in town has a schedule that comes even close to that level of challenge and commitment.

An evening with the ADC is an eerie and sometimes confusing experience. They run their productions Thursdays-Saturdays, three weekends per month, in a frame house stocked with a miscellany of chairs and makeshift multiple-level seating. It's dark in there. The house seats up to 35, but I haven't seen more than about 20 when I've visited. You have to contact Japhy at japhyfernandes@live.com to get any directions more specific than those I've indicated above.

This is a word-of-mouth world, where the ADC core is willing to share their experience only with those who are is really, really interested in seeking them out. 

After puzzling at this, I've begun to think that they do not really need an audience. They're pleased to have you there, but they're not hustling to have you, other than putting up a few homemade posters and, now, passing along some information to AustinLiveTheatre. No one is hawking soft drinks or wine in return for a "suggested contribution" and they don't do much to point out the tip jar out there in the entry behind the kitchen. Company members must be getting their charge from the texts themselves, from the comradeship of the Sunday-Wednesday rehearsals, and from the Thursday-Saturday evening performances.

The demands upon members in that inner circle are extensive, both in terms of time and in terms of devotion to the considerable challenges of their texts.

Their approach is respectful but not reverent. Last year Julio Mella directed a Richard III set in a Warner Brothers' gangster world. Japhy Fernandes sets their current Macbeth in a vaguely contemporary time where the Scots lords carry golf clubs and automatic pistols. Tartans and chequered sweaters are much in evidence. Fernandescuts the text both to the measure of the ten-person company and in order to speed the delivery, but he retains the essential elements and conventional interpretations of the characters.

As in any self-identified group, there's a range of abilities. Fernandes as Macbeth has good command of his Shakespeare and his character. Russell Shugart as MacDuff is solid, well-spoken, appropriately indignant and heroic. Christopher Harris is lean and mean in the ensemble, as Ross, as a murderer and as the porter. Java as the hapless Banquo scarcely escapes from cartoon cliché, for whenever he's pensive he must needs rub his chin in doleful reflection and when he's surprised he throws up his hands and his mouth goes to a silent "O!" India Raney gets into the role of Lady Macbeth with girlish glee rather than gravitas. 

Young Thatcher Fernandes and his mom Ellen are effective as MacDuff's doomed family. Despite his tender age and slight frame Thatcher does an impressive hobgobliny turn as the crook-backed witch Hecate.

The Austin Drama Club is testimony that someone, somewhere, will always be doing Shakespeare's work. Their next invocation will be of Richard III, in April. In frank awe at such intensity, I echo Hecate, speaking to the three weird sisters:

". . . .I commend your pains, 
And every one shall share i’ th’ gains. 
And now about the cauldron sing, 
Like elves and fairies in a ring, 
Enchanting all that you put in.'" 

 

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Macbeth
by William Shakespeare
Austin Drama Club