Fair is foul and foul is fair.
The BU Players put on William Shakespeare’s Macbeth at the Alvina Krause Theatre in Bloomsburg. The curtains rose from Wednesday, Nov. 5 to Sunday November 9 to a pretty full house.
For those who haven’t read Macbeth before, the play is about Scottish General Macbeth who hears a prophecy from three witches who promise he will become king; all at the cost of many people’s lives and Macbeth’s sanity. The play combines magic, murder, royalty, and human nature into a classic play.
Kellyanne Klause, a senior theatre major who played Macbeth, said “I’m super proud of the work that everyone did in the show.Everyone really rose up to the expectations and to the challenge of playing Shakespeare. ”
Most of the people in the audience, majority being there for Theatre Appreciation, or anyone who didn’t know much about the play, would find it boring. A lot of people found the play to be enjoyable, although a little difficult to follow at times if they didn’t know much about the story.
First, I give props to the BU Players for undertaking the giant known as Shakespeare. The amount of lines, particularly old English that had to be memorized is astounding. The audience could tell the amount of time taken to memorize the lines and portraying them in the production, so bravo!
Klause described the challenge with “the heightened language mixed with the heightened circumstances along with playing a man and having to sword fight was a whole new challenge, but such a fun and exhilarating challenge.” She is proud of all the hard work she had to do to undertake this accomplishment.
The strongest part of the show was the overall design. The costumes were fantastic. The lighting, smoke machine technology, and sound design were absolutely superb, each setting the scene and mood of each act. The fight choreography was good, especially towards the end. The production value of this show was excellent.
The play is often called “the Scottish play” due to an infamous curse regarding any actor saying “Macbeth” often ends up sick or even injured supposedly. The BU Players had a spooky encounter with the curse after one actor, Bry Kifolo who played Macduff, sprained her knee a week before opening night. Despite the spooky setback, the show went on and was done well.
