Reviews 2011
Reviews 2011
✭✭✭✩✩
by Rick Miller, directed by Sean Lynch
Wyrd Productions, Factory Theatre Mainspace, Toronto
September 13-25, 2011
As many people must already know, Rick Miller’s MacHomer, a solo show he has been touring around the world since 1994, consists of his performing Shakespeare’s Macbeth using the voices of the characters of the long-running animated television series The Simpsons. Now I must admit that I have never seen a single episode of The Simpsons. I do know who some of the characters are just because it’s hard not to encounter them and their names when a show has been on television continuously since 1989. Knowing that I was going to the review the show, I thought I ought to rent the first few seasons of the series to prepare. But then I thought, first, that boning up for a few hours would still not put me in the position of a loyal fan and, second, that my very lack of knowledge could actually be a benefit. If a show is truly good it should appeal to audience whether it knows about the subject or not. You didn’t have to be an expert in quantum physics to enjoy Michael Frayn’s Copenhagen, so why should you have to be an expert in The Simpsons to enjoy MacHomer?
As it turns out, knowing The Simpsons is not really necessary to enjoying MacHomer. Rick Miller uses over fifty voices in the show, many of them not related to the series at all. Knowing the show would help you judge the accuracy of his imitations, but that is all. In fact, every time a new character in introduced his picture and name are displayed on a screen behind Miller. What is abundantly clear is that Miller is an astoundingly talented performer, able to project a greater number of distinct voices in only 75 minutes than any other solo performer I’ve seen.
The show is amazing on purely a technical level. Behind Miller is an animated background, beautifully designed in flat TV cartoon style by Miller and Craig Francis Designs, and in front is a video camera hidden in the TV set-cum-cauldron. The interaction of live action with the background, live video and Beth Kates’ dramatic lighting cues is flawless--except when Miller’s microphone shorted causing an unintended intermission that disturbed no one. Often the visual jokes trump anything that is being said as when MacHomer’s medieval castle is shown to have two nuclear reactors in it as its keeps.
What is necessary to enjoy the show is a good knowledge of Shakespeare’s play. The combination of constantly changing funny voices and accents with Shakespeare’s words and Miller’s interpolations means that rather little of the text is clear. If you don’t know the play, you won’t understand what is happening, and if you don’t know Shakespeare, you won’t get Miller’s jokes about Shakespeare’s vocabulary or Miller’s allusions to other the Bard’s plays like Romeo and Juliet, King Lear or Hamlet.
MacHomer doesn’t give you any insight into Macbeth or into The Simpsons. Miller repeats the old canard that Shakespeare was the popular culture of his day, neglecting the fact that all the plays by Shakespeare and his contemporaries were subsidized by aristocratic patrons whereas popular culture is purely commercial. Any tragedy would become comic if the main character were played as an idiot and everyone spoke in silly voices. Interestingly, Miller has to work far too hard to make two passages humorous--Macduff’s learning of the death of his family and MacHomer’s learning of the death of his wife. In the first even the silly voice can’t detract from the power of Shakespeare’s words and in the second Miller resorts to distractions, like a survey of other television sitcom couples, to force profound comments into comedy.
MacHomer is primarily a vehicle for Miller’s multiple talents and it can certainly be appreciated as just that. Miller’s impressions of Sean Connery, George W. Bush and Obama drew more laughter than did the Simpsons characters. For an encore, Miller presents Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” as performed by “twenty-five of the most annoying voices in popular music”. These include Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Johnny Cash, Aerosmith and numerous other heavy metal bands, along with Elvis Costello, Barry White, Leonard Cohen, Julio Iglesias and Andrea Boccelli. As in MacHomer, the constantly changing voices and vocal styles make the words almost unintelligible. In both you can’t fail to appreciate Miller’s vocal dexterity, but in both the parade of impersonations conveys nothing.
At first the inclusion of MacHomer in the Stratford Shakespeare Festival’s 60th season next year seemed outrageous. Now having seen it, I find it is actually appropriate. For at least two decades the Festival has been forcing one outlandish concept on Shakespeare’s plays after another with little thought whether the concept in any way enlightens the play. Think of Richard Rose’s low-class New York state Taming of the Shrew in 1997, Leon Rubin’s bungee-jumping rainforest Midsummer Night’s Dream in 2004 or Des McAnuff’s faux-Magrittean As You Like It last year or his current Twelfth Night that is more about imitating popular music styles than the text. To have Macbeth performed by the Simpsons makes just as much sense as any of these and at least features a fantastic central performance.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.
Photo: Rick Miller. ©2011 Michael Cooper.
For tickets, visit www.factorytheatre.ca.
2011-09-14
MacHomer