The Grammer of Macbeth

About a dozen years ago, just before I won that trifecta called marriage, house, and children, the wife and I - excuse my, my girlfriend-slash-fiance and I - would venture into NYC with another couple every year to see an off-Broadway play. Then we'd eat and drink at a fine-dining establishment and have a grand old time, a money-no-object type of time.

We did this three years in a row. First year we saw Kevin Spacey in The Iceman Cometh. Good, if a bit longish and verbose. Good enough to inspire me to borrow and read O'Neill's play. Next year we saw Quentin Tarantino and Marisa Tomei in Wait Until Dark. Kinda corny but fast-paced and loaded with more than a few genuine scares.

The third year we saw my one and only Shakespearean play: Macbeth.

Starring Kelsey Grammer in the title role.

I am unqualified to make any critical judgments here, other than as a Shakespearean newbie accessing a decade-old memory. But I will tell you what my gut is telling me: somehow it didn't work. Too lazy to research reviews from the time period, but I don't think they were glowing.

Still, I give Frasier credit for tackling the role.

Why don't I think it worked?

Well, most of all, it was trying to be "modern," I suppose, "modern" meaning "edgy" and "avant garde." I'd prefer something more traditional, something closer to the way Shakespeare staged it. But I was seeing it in New York City and not the Globe Theatre in London, so that's to be expected.

Here's what I remember most. The stage was completely black. The curtains were black. Everyone (except Lady Macbeth, who wore a white nightgown) was costumed in a drab, black uniform. There were two ladders on either side of the rear stage, both leading up to a horizontal ladder connecting the two. It looked a lot like a depressing playground where Dieter from SNL's Sprockets might bring his children.

This was the first Shakespeare in fifteen years for me, since my high school class plodded through Romeo and Juliet. What surprised me - what really, truly surprised me - was how foreign the whole thing sounded to my unschooled ear. English four centuries old could have been Sanskrit or Mandarin Chinese for all I knew. I caught every tenth word and lost myself puzzling out a phrase while the fast-spoken dialogue raced lines ahead of me. The only way I knew what was going on was to "read between the lines" observing the characters' actions.

Grammer himself threw himself into the role, but, you know, all I could see was Dr. Frazier Crane. I give anyone who can memorize and perform a thousand lines of spoken dialogue super-props. However, he was a little on the paunchy side in a too-tight black uniform, so convincing as a Scottish warlord he was not.

I was aware of the whole Lady Macbeth-guilty conscience theme, but the actress just seemed a tad too histrionic for my tastes. I was like, come on, Lady, get to the knifing scene already.

The length was not too bad (lines must have been cut from the play to keep it at about three hours). My wife had to suffer, though. Some corpulent bozo behind her decided to noisily suck on a bag of cough drops, one after the other, all through those 180 minutes. But she came out okay. A stage-door hound, she managed to have Mr. Grammer autograph her Playbill (as did Mr. Spacey two years prior).

Thinking about this all in depth for the first time in a decade, I'd grade the experience a solid-C. Still, that being said, I would not mind seeing either Macbeth again (preferably in a more traditional staging) or Kelsey Grammer tackling another Shakespearean role.

How's that for an open mind?