That Voodoo you do: Voodoo Macbeth at The Studio@620

There are notable strengths and weaknesses in Voodoo Macbeth, currently at The Studio@620 in St. Pete, and which will seem most prominent to you probably depends on what you look for in drama in general and in Shakespeare in particular. On the strong side, it’s an inspired choice to perform Macbeth with an all-black cast and to place it in a West Indies of magic and the uncanny. After all, Shakespeare’s tragedy features witches, a ghost, an ectoplasmic dagger, and indelible blood stains; what better play to transport to an occult Caribbean?

Further, there’s something thrilling about the drumming that incessantly undergirds certain scenes and punctuates others: This is primal, irresistible music that seems both to comment on and to illustrate the passions motivating most of the characters in this high-energy pageant. Then there are memorable performances, especially by Sharon Scott in the role of domineering head witch Hecate, Kylin Brady, Audrey Love, and Janesia “Jai” Shanae as the Weird Sisters, Sachel Andre Dennis as Macduff, and Thomas Morgan as Banquo. And finally there’s the shrewd editing that director Bob Devin Jones has done with the play, reducing its five acts to two, and keeping it charging ahead at a rapid clip. This is about as efficient as Shakespeare gets, and it feels exciting at every moment.

But then there’s the minus side: The two leads, Calvin M. Thompson in the title role and Erica Sutherlin as Lady Macbeth, lack complexity and depth, and the island accents of the whole cast, when combined with the difficulty of Shakespeare’s 17^th century language, render some of the play’s poetry near-incomprehensible. James Oleson’s set, a bare stage with seven small crates backed by large panels painted abstractly, contributes little to our sense of place, and Saidah Ben Judah’s many costumes (there are 19 actors in the show) represent such a mix of styles, they make our efforts to know where we are all the more difficult. With so many virtues and defects in one production, it seems logical that audiences will differ as to whether Voodoo Macbeth succeeds as a whole. My own feeling is that it’s a daring attempt to expose the secret wellsprings of a text we thought we knew, and therefore a show worth seeing. As much as I regret the production’s weaknesses, I sense it brought me closer to true Shakespeare than a hundred more conventional versions.

And Jones’s version certainly works as a decisive interpretation of a famously ambiguous tale. In Voodoo Macbeth, there’s no question of whether the Weird Sisters really exist: They definitely do, and they put ideas into Macbeth’s head that he never would have had without their interference. As played by Thompson, it only takes about three seconds for Macbeth to change from a loyal soldier of King Duncan to an ambitious usurper and would-be murderer; and with the incitement of his amoral wife, it’s never really in doubt that he’ll cut Duncan’s throat. Yes, this Macbeth has qualms — but they’re a predator’s qualms about the size of the prey, not an ethical man’s scruples about crossing some inner line. As for the king Macbeth means to slaughter, James L. Lincoln plays him as a good old sort, without suspicions or doubts, an easy target for a cunning opponent. Of course, once Macbeth starts killing, he finds it hard to know when to stop. The admirable Banquo, played by Morgan as a good friend and honest subject, will have to go (if only those witches hadn’t blessed his descendants!), and next Lady Macduff (Nancy Mizzell) and her cherubic son (Elijah Dixon) will have to pay for loving Macbeth’s nemesis. If it weren’t so hard to make out some of the dialogue beneath those thick accents, there’s suspense enough in this great tragedy to keep us riveted from start to finish. As for that most famous of Macbeth’s speeches — beginning “Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow/Creeps in this petty pace from day to day” — Thompson delivers it with some force, but never lets us feel that he’s newly discovering a nihilism he hadn’t possessed when the play began. That’s what his performance lacks: the sense of a trajectory, a change over time.

 But maybe that’s asking the wrong thing of a production whose deepest truths seem to lie in that mesmerizing drumming. Voodoo Shakespeare is, in its way, as ambitious as its antihero, and considerably more life-affirming. It could be better in a dozen ways – yet I suspect I’ll remember it when more conventional versions have faded into oblivion.

This article appears in Apr 6-13, 2017.