Advertisement

Jobsite's 'Macbeth' is a spine-tingling thriller

 
Jobsite Theater’s production of Macbeth features just eight actors, including Giles Davies, left, and Dahlia Legault. It opens Friday at the Straz Center.
Jobsite Theater’s production of Macbeth features just eight actors, including Giles Davies, left, and Dahlia Legault. It opens Friday at the Straz Center.
Published Oct. 29, 2013

Is there anything more terrifying than greed, corruption and violence, those deep-seated emotions that can take over when we are pushed too far, when the promise of power is too great? Jobsite Theater's production of Macbeth doesn't think so. It poses that our own potential for evil is far scarier than any zombie with a blood-stained mouth.

With only eight actors, the small company's production of Shakespeare's original psychological thriller focuses on the two central families — the Macbeths and the Macduffs — and how they respond to the Powers, four actors representing elemental, primordial forces who assume the roles of all the other characters in the show. The Powers are neither good nor evil, but they do challenge each character to question if his or her moral compass is pointing due North.

The dialogue is straight from Shakespeare, but Jobsite has cut it down to its meatiest parts for an immersive 90-minute experience set in a modern fantasy world where magic and technology coexist. No haunted house will send chills up your back like witches casting spells in iambic pentameter and wielding handguns.

The show opens Friday and runs through Nov. 24 with performances at 8 p.m. Thursday, Friday and Saturday and 4 p.m. Sunday at the David A. Straz Jr. Center for the Performing Arts, 1010 N MacInnes Place, Tampa. Tickets are $28. Preview performance at 8 tonight. (813) 229-7827. strazcenter.org.

Katie Manfred, Times staff writer