The table scene, where the two face off in a test of wills, is a feat of physical theater. Though, no doubt, it was tightly staged by fight directory Geoffrey Kent, it doesn’t appear so as food, spoons, plates and bodies tumble and fly. It’s funny and terrifying at the same time.
Hurster and LeGrand are a revelation; their bruising ballet induced deserved opening-night gasps. It hurts to watch, and yet you can’t look away.
That’s because it is, intermittently, tons of fun. Geoffrey Kent, who doubles as fight director and plays romantic musketeer Aramis, has choreographed many huge fights that are precise, aerodynamic and, best of all, believable.
Fight director Geoffrey Kent directs as much roughhousing as a Democratic National Convention protest. These aren’t simply one-on-one duels. These are full-on battle scenes that often turn clever and comedic. It’s a very impressive display, and one that drew deserved applause from the audience on several occasions on opening night.
“Geoff Kent cuts through the play’s darkness — literal and figurative both — as a virtuous and good-hearted Macduff. He handles the scene in which he learns the fate of his family by going inward and contrasting the violence with stillness. It’s a powerful moment.”
But The Lieutenant of Inishmore doesn’t glorify violence; it exposes it as the last resort of stupid, mentally powerless people. I have to admit that all the ghoulish bloodletting does give a certain horrified pleasure — witness all the guilty, chuckling gasps emitted by the audience.
If you know the story, you know it culminates in a neck snap, and it’s so harrowingly performed here, when the victim went limp, I wanted to shout for an ambulance. It was that believable.
Dirty and daring, intense and intimate, Listen Productions’ cowboy-themed “Macbeth” is Shakespeare for a new generation.
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