I saw Macbeth on a summer twilight at the Bristol Zoo, of all places, my year in England. It was a straightforward performance by a small company (so there were a few people doing two roles), with minimalist staging and costuming, and it worked very well. Somehow the occasional distant lion's roar enhanced the atmosphere perfectly.

I saw it performed by Actors from the London Stage. Some from RSC, one who'd worked under Olivier, all with excellent credentials. Five actors. One play. It was like nothing I'd ever seen before.

Each actor played about six parts, and they indicated who they were both by how they wore their sash and their voices, which was surprisingly effective.

No props but the musical instruments they often used to very interesting effect. A circle denoted the stage proper, and chairs outside the circle gave them places to sit down.

Fuck scene changes. The action was completely fluid, as one scene ended and the actors left the circle, the next scene's actors jumped right into the circle and began the next scene.

They savored the language. Sometimes it felt less like a staging of the play than a reading without the script. Sometimes it felt like they were overacting, becoming unduly emotional, but that's just style, I guess. And they were British, so it all sounded so much righter.

And God, they were good. They didn't slip up once. Not a single flub. And to have to slip between characters...at first I was impressed when one of the actors stepped outside the circle, having finished the Porter scene, and turned around as Lennox, but the crowning moment was the banquet scene, when the woman playing Ross bade the guests rise, as Macbeth was not well, and immediately walked to her left and became Lady Macbeth, bidding them to sit down. To watch them in action, effortlessly fixing their sashes, changing voices...wow.

That's one of the trickiest ways to stage it, P-C, but unarguably one of the most effective when the cast and director pull it off.

I can't laugh at that. I'm firmly convinced if I laugh at the Scots play, I'll get hit by lightning.

I'm one of those crazy performer types with Macbeth fear.

Flash back to sophomore year of college: My director, at the beginning of tech week, is sitting with us in the theater and says the name of the Scottish play. We all grow silent and terrified. Two days later, my roomate, best friend, and stage manager doesn't feel good in the morning. Sickness persists and I want to bring her to the hospital, but director doesn't want to lose Stage Manager and Lead for the night so he sends her with someone else. When we go to visit her (in full hair and make-up) after the rehearsal, a nurse asks where we are from, goes into a back room, comes back and says (no joke) "Your friend is very sick, and we need you to leave the hospital now." I'm woken up the next morning, and told she has meningitis, I, and the rest of the cast, will have to go on some heavy duty antibiotics, and the Board of Health has closed the show down.

Damn Macbeth.

Don't fuck with the Scottish Play, man. Bad ju ju.

Besides, think of the paper cuts when you try to get carnal with the text.

Dude. Etext.

Each actor played about six parts, and they indicated who they were both by how they wore their sash and their voices, which was surprisingly effective.

I saw R&J done this way with 4 actors. They were RSC, but they were traveling with the production through the states. I saw it in NM. Really really good.

One of the Fringe Festival offerings when I lived in Montreal was a one-man version of the Scottish play, done entirely in characters from the Simpsons. It was freaking hysterical.

Another group did a version of Henry V in a field on Mont Royal, with the audience trailing behind the actors through the woods as the armies marched. Cool.

The worst Shakespeare staging I ever saw was Hamlet done at the hoity toity actors school at Yale. I think it was meant to be experimental, but the stage was designed with ramparts attached to the ceiling, so that the ooutside parts and the inside parts of the play could happen without scene change, and during an interlude between Hamlet and Ophelia the ceiling started to, um, decline. We finally realized it was because an outside scene was happening next, but we spent those brief minutes hoping that the ceiling would crush Hamlet to death and we would be able to leave.

The best Hamlet I saw was the National Theatre of the Deaf, staging it all from Ophelia's point of view. (She doesn't drown till after everybody else is dead, so you actually get to the end of the play and double-back.) It really worked, showing with visual language as Ophelia falls into a river made of the arms of the two people asking each other (in sign) "Drowned?" "Drowned."

Also, I just liked that Ophelia got to step in and slap characters around when they were being morons. Which was often, this being Hamlet.