Who would have thought if you pitted William Shakespeare against Franz Kafka mano a maggot, the bug would squash the Bard?
When it comes to the two original productions the Buntport Theater Company is running in repertory through Dec. 3, “Macblank” is an amusement compared to the more sophisticated and realized “Kafka on Ice”.
No one produces original ensemble comedies with the intelligence and depth of Buntport. What makes them so magnificent is that they have such a low threshold for boredom. They constantly concoct artistic challenges for themselves both noble and mad. Here, not content with merely presenting their 14th new collaboration, they are debuting Nos. 14 and 15 simultaneously.
“Macblank” would have made for a fabulous episode of Buntport’s winter side gig, “Magnets on the Fridge,” the biweekly original sit-com that returns for a fourth season Nov. 16. Each episode is loosely based on a random book title, and “Macblank” plays as if the Scottish play were the most recent slip of paper pulled from the lunch pail.
Each “Magnets” episode is developed in its miraculous entirety in two weeks. That is part of the appeal. But as a mainstage production, “Macblank” feels similarly rushed.
“Macblank” is constructed, too loosely, as a documentary of one company’s doomed production of “Macbeth,” the world’s most famously cursed play. So many bad things have happened during 400 years of productions, thespians won’t even utter the title inside a theater unless in performance.
“Macblank” is so pregnant with parody possibilities, it’s like plugging fish in a pond. The Buntporters lampoon all those “Macbeth” superstitions while sweetly toying with the peccadilloes and insecurities of actors and poking self-effacing fun at themselves.
The “Macblank” troupe consists of five lovingly hardcore theater geeks whose names have been changed to protect them from being too easily compared to the Buntporters playing them.
Stuffy Ryan (Erik Edborg) dons a faux British accent from having lived in London for 21 months as a boy. Rob (Brian Colonna) is the typical tense actor working six miserable jobs. But underdog Evan Weissman walks away with the show as misfit Greg, the prototypical theater outcast. He’s a sweetly insecure loner looking more for a home in this theater (or a girlfriend) than a calling. Greg constantly blurts awkward non-sequiters that ring painfully true to anyone who has ever tried a little too hard to fit in.
Then there is Beth (Erin Rollman), heartbreakingly passive-aggressive and growing drunk with desire to improve her position in the production. You know there must be underlying parallels to Shakespearean text, and in Beth we are clearly witnessing a descent into murderous madness to match the killer king. Ah, such a thin line between a curse and a capital crime.
Between scenes, cast members offer “Real World”-style confessionals. Most amusing are Miranda’s (Hannah Duggan) real-life travails, all of which parallel Bard works such as “Romeo and Juliet,” “Hamlet” and “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” (my boyfriend looks like a donkey!”).
But as the evening wears on, “Macblank” runs out of steam. The evening is dominated by Beth’s anecdotes about past cursed productions, and a device that works initially grows tiresome. More fun could have been had with the fact that Charlton Heston once suffered severe burns on his groin from wearing tights that had been “accidentally” soaked in kerosene in a 1953 production.
Because the company’s adherence to “Macbeth” parallels go by the boards, the evening ends with a thud. Our perpetrator suffers no consequences, and no outsiders sweep in to clean up the mess.
But there are worse things that could be said of a company than that really it only suffers in comparison to itself. Call it the curse of Kafka.
-John Moore, October 21, 2004, Denver Post