Ionesco’s "Macbett" at The Satirikon Theater
Reviewed by John Freedman -- 2001
It is hard to imagine anything shocking anyone any more these days. But if
my intuition doesn't fail me, the opening scenes of Eugene Ionesco's
"Macbett" do just that with spectators at the Satirikon Theater.
The stage is littered with piles of lifesize effigies -- corpses wrapped in
bandages -- run through with spears. Clowns, in the guises of such
characters as Glamis, Candor,
slaughter, whoop it up and have a jolly good time as the weirdly appropriate
strains of Marianne Faithfull singing "Don't Explain" drift above the fray.
The enthusiasm in the acts of killing and the jubilant responses to this
mass murder is distinctly disconcerting.
It is also very funny. Which probably is why the people around me at one of
the first shows in the run seemed unable to react. You could almost see
their thoughts hanging in the air: You can't laugh at something like this!
Has the Satirikon gone mad?!
If it has, we have Yury Butusov to thank for taking us over the edge.
Butusov, the young, highly-regarded director from
the best new directors to have
emerged in
so. Butusov's production of this relatively late Ionesco farce -- sometimes
called a comics parody -- is masterful. While showing off a tremendous flair
for creating arresting visual images, Butusov, following Ionesco,
mercilessly attacks our prejudices and preconceptions about heroism,
patriotism, civic duty, political loyalty and other notions routinely
employed by thugs and fools to justify carnage and chaos.
Ionesco stuck relatively close to Shakespeare's plot, but he emerged with a
vastly different play. Although written in 1972, this remains a wacky,
subversive work with a supremely modern intonation. Ionesco skewers
everyone. Duncan (Denis Sukhanov) is a fop. The friends Macbett (Grigory
Siyatvinda) and Banquo (Maxim Averin) are cutthroats who frequently speak
the same lines as they grow increasingly suspicious of each other and
eventually become mortal enemies.
At the center of Alexander Shishkin's set is a huge wall of black blocks.
Armies coming and going repeatedly knock the wall down and rebuild it before
knocking it back down again. The sea of corpses is cleared but bodies build
up again. This is a world in which violence, destruction and utter stupidity
form a never-ending cycle.
Meanwhile, all of the culprits in the mayhem are merely playing roles. They
are comedians in the theater of life and -- for the most part -- they know
it. They play their parts, slaying and betraying with relish.
True, there is one hitch:
encourages Macbett to assassinate the king and then becomes Lady Macbett, is
actually more than she appears to be. She, in fact, is a witch who takes on
the form of the other woman in order to wreak havoc on the plans and
aspirations of men.
The upshot is this: even though the bloodthirsty warriors know they are
playing a game, they do not know until too late that they are pawns in a
game much more serious than theirs.
Butusov brilliantly captures the enthusiastic wrecklessness of men whose
thoughts and actions run amock. His cast is all over the place, appendages
of a single, potent power source gone haywire. And then, with swift, sure
strokes, he undercuts the manic pace, leaving us suddenly to ponder the
vulnerability even of murderers. The nocturnal picture of Macbett uneasily
tossing and turning with his fears in a vertically-standing bed is worth a
thousand words.
Playing multiple roles of jesters and soldiers, Vladimir Bolshov and Fyodor
Dobronravov set the tone early. Donning dunce caps, they make naughty
child's play of war and subterfuge.
Siyatvinda's characterization of Macbett is a stunning achievement. This is
an actor of tremendous range and subtlety and he puts all of it to use as he
inhabits the skin of a man who succumbs to most of the key temptations known
to man.
Steklova, too, becomes something of a force of nature in her various
incarnations, leading Macbett on, egging him on, whipping him into a fury
from which he ultimately cannot escape.
"Macbett" is a trademark Butusov production, filled with paradoxes. It is
both a slap in the face of public taste, to borrow a phrase from
Mayakovsky's futurists, and a hilarious send-up of the evils of politics. In
short, it's another great show from the Satirikon.
***"Macbett" plays Monday and July 12 at
located at 8 Sheremetyevskaya Ulitsa. Metro Rizhskaya. Tel. 289-7885,
289-7844. Running time: 3 hours.***