When I mentioned to a friend that I was going to be seeing Dateline: Macbeth at this year’s Capital Fringe Festival, he commented, “Why does the Fringe have plays about Macbeth or Edgar Allen Poe every year?” A good question, I suppose. While it might not be the literal truth, it does seem like both subjects are common yarn for this particular event.
Dateline: Macbeth tries to distinguish itself by taking the Scottish play and introducing the more melodramatic elements of Dateline NBC-esque crime investigation shows.
Michael (Andy Hopper) is a past-his-prime television star modeled after David Hasselhoff. His wife, Kate (Amy Frances Quint), had a promising acting career that she gave up to support her husband. They arrive in Hawaii where a two-bit theater is staging Macbeth, and that is where the supposed intrigue begins. They join a troupe of actors made up of theater folk stereotypes, and begin their plot to take over the production and resurrect their careers.
The story mirrors Shakespeare’s original, and the script draws from the Bard’s text as the couple start their descent into psychopathy. Throughout Dateline: Macbeth, a TV anchor played by Hugo Armstrong appears in filmed segments to provide running commentary. It’s a shame that the funniest character in the show is the one who did not appear on stage.
That’s not to say that the cast was bad; Hopper and Quint do a more than serviceable job working with less than ideal material. Matthew Gunn Park plays Stephen, the lead actor in the troupe with which Michael and Kate are working, and brought much needed energy and lightness to the production. Unfortunately, the premise is just too cute by half. The classical material is handled well and the reality television component is good joke fodder. But even the talented cast cannot rescue the poor structure when it comes to combining the two pieces.
Dateline: Macbeth is playing at the Warehouse. Remaining performances are:
Tonight, July 22 at 6:45 p.m.
Thursday, July 24 at 9:45 p.m.
Saturday, July 26 at 1:30 p.m.
