Perhaps there should be an inspired-by-Macbeth checklist, or a caution list. Or something that says: approach this text with a creative wariness. If only Scotland, PA—a Roundabout production which opens tonight at the Laura Pels Theatre (to December 8)—had done this. Alas, it feels “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
Macbeth can be done well or terribly in the original text, even before you take it as the basis of a new musical (based on the 2001 movie, directed by Billy Morrissette). If you’re going to go for it, the first hurdle is to decide on your tone and approach. If you’re going tragic, go fully tragic. If you’re going comic, go comic. If you’re going to mix tragedy and comedy, treat it as the most important cocktail you will ever mix in your life and get the combinations right. Or: bleurgh.
Scotland, PA, set in the fall of 1975, starts as what seems to be a simple stoner comedy, with its That ‘70s Show set of a crappy Pennsylvania diner overseen by Duncan (Jeb Brown). His son Malcolm (Will Meyers) is the archetypal kid who can’t stand his dad, but after some backchat about how dead-endy things are in the joint and town, suddenly the musical takes a left turn, with father hitting son and son revealing father used to hit dead mother. Whoa, OK.
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