Macbeth at the BAM
I attended the Feb 23rd evening performance of Macbeth, starring Patrick Stewart and Kate Fleetwood and I've been procrastinating posting a review. I'm not sure what value I can add to the numerous professional reviews that have already been posted and read by many, but since quite a few of the posts of this blog involve Patrick Stewart I felt I owed it to my readers to share something of my experience. After tossing a few ideas about in my head I decided that what I could post about was MY experience at the play and the Q&A that I attended the following day.
Getting to the play was an adventure in itself and we very nearly didn't make it. This was the weekend with all the snow/sleet and messy winter weather that closed airports and cancelled flights. When we arrived in Detroit on Friday, Feb 22, our flight to New York had been cancelled. The airline informed us there were no flights available until Monday. Since this would have meant missing the play and the Q&A we were faced with two options, fly back home and find another way to get to New York, or scrap the trip to New York and just go somewhere else for the weekend. We went with the first option and flew back home. I wasn't keen on driving in bad weather, so we waited and left Saturday morning, leaving us with about 10 hours to get there. The drive took us about 7 hours and went pretty smoothly. After arriving in New York things went a whole lot smoother.
The Harvey Theater, part of the Brooklyn Academy of Music, was smaller than what I expected. According to the website, it seats 874. Our seats were seven rows back, off to the left (if you are facing the stage) and just about in front of the sink, where many interesting things happened. When I was fortunate enough to catch Patrick Stewart's one man version of A Christmas Carol at the La Jolla Playhouse in 1994, a theater which according to its website seats 492, I recall being about 13 rows back and yet somehow I seemed much, much closer to the stage at the Harvey Theater, even though there were only 6 rows difference in seats. Perhaps it is because the stage at the Harvey Theater is not raised and that the first row of seats literally rings the stage. Whatever the reason, when one of the actors looked in my direction, it felt like they were actually looking at me, not just at some point over my head. I could clearly see their eyes, facial expressions, props and a lot of little details. There were times in the play where the actors would enter/exit from the audience and there was one particular segment where one of the actors was shining a flashlight at random audience members and incorporating them into the scene. All these little details, pulled the audience in and at least from my perspective made it almost feel like I was part of it, rather than just a spectator. There has been so much written already about the technical details of the play, the use of video screens, the music, the freight elevator, there really isn't much I can add. I will say, however, that it all worked very well. I was a bit skeptical when I'd heard that there were going to be video screens and automatic rifles and other modern elements. But the director's modernizations fit in so well, it did not seem the least bit gimmicky.
This is getting good reviews and Patrick Stewart looks fantastic as Antony. 
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I normally don’t spend much time on ebay (there is always something I want to buy) and I’ll only buy autographed items when its auctioned by/for a charity. Well last week I won a bid on a Patrick Stewart autographed baseball cap for/from