Haldane actors see modern themes in classic tragedy
A 400-year-old play that is one of Shakespeare’s most famous works still conveys meaning to Haldane High School drama students.
Sophomore English classes include a unit on Macbeth, so the rise and fall of the lead character and his lady is familiar to the actors and crew, who will stage a production on Dec. 6 and 7.
For Martha Mechalakos, Haldane’s theater director, the selection checked a lot of boxes: it’s canonical, students like it, the cast is doable for the small school and there is striking relevance to today. “It examines the idea of political corruption and how easily one can be manipulated and led astray by envy, guilt, greed and paranoia that brings destruction and downfall,” she said.
The leads are double-cast. At a recent rehearsal, Merrick Williams and Helen Hutchison, who will perform on Dec. 7, watched their counterparts, Lucius Bell and Sophie Koch, work the stage.
Bell, who will play Macbeth to Koch’s Lady Macbeth on Dec. 6, huddled with Williams during lulls to study their dog-eared copies of the script and exchange tips, like two athletes going over the playbook. Hutchison enjoys Lady Macbeth’s line dissing her husband for agonizing over whether to stop the violence or continue vanquishing enemies.
“She compares him to ‘the cat in the adage,’ meaning a proverb where the feline wants the fish but is afraid to get its paws wet,” Hutchison says. “I connect with her because she’s a powerful woman — with some issues. It’s such a fun role and there aren’t that many strong female characters in Shakespeare.”
Photos by Jim Mechalakos
Hutchison also digs the phrase “from his mother’s womb untimely ripped,” referring to antagonist Macduff being born by C-section, a quirk in the rules that allows him to slay MacBeth and become king.
During the rehearsal, Bell delivered lines with various accents and exuberant intensity. Koch took a more refined, understated approach and Gemma Sabin delivered comedy gold as the Porter of hell.
For 3 1/2 hours, the tech crew paid careful attention and took notes as adult volunteer/advisor Damian McDonald rode a lift 30 feet up to the ceiling and tinkered with the lights. “We don’t have a catwalk,” he said, adjusting color calibrations with his phone. “That’s one drawback of having a stage in the gym.”
The proceedings took place under the keen eye of Mechalakos, known by students as Ms. Mek, who doled out stage directions: “Make it more sinister, it’s a little light. I need more menace.” During the banquet scene, she said: “Keep separation, you got jumbled up there. Try not to be so fidgety.”
For Williams, the play is not “some crazy story that could only happen to Macbeth.” Everyone is susceptible to “vaulting ambition,” he says, adding that the play has staying power because its message about greed and power and how that can lead to insanity reflects things that are “still going on.”
Williams marvels at Shakespeare’s oblique but “masterful” language and how it succinctly captures ideas. One line that rings true for him is: “I am in blood / stepped in so far that I should wade no more, / Returning were as tedious as go o’er and continue the mayhem.”
The line can apply to “lying nowadays, and how everyone does it, but if you find yourself in a river of blood, the lies will come crashing down,” he says. “He [Macbeth] stands at the abyss, and it all leads to going mad and killing people — like absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
Haldane is located at 15 Craigside Drive in Cold Spring. Tickets are $12 ($5 for students and seniors) at dub.sh/haldane-macbeth or the door. Each performance begins at 7 p.m.
