Word: colapinto
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...Colapinto's Macbeth seems to have two basic styles of diction: shouting and petulant muttering. The first, which appears in most of his earlier scenes, entails Colapinto's roaring his lines very loudly and in evident agony at the ceiling, the audience, the other characters, or whatever happens to be handy. The goal, evidently, is to convey Macbeth's anguish and guilt. This is in itself not really so objectionable. Histrionics is a forgivable flaw in a performance that calls for intense extremes of emotion...
...where Colapinto's performance leaves the realm of the comprehensible and becomes downright baffling is the second mode in which his Macbeth operates: the petulant. In delivering his lines, Colapinto seems to shift abruptly from shouts of anguish to the persona of a cynical, self-centered adolescent. Speaking in a tone of mingled peevishness and self-pity, he proceeds to recite Macbeth's lines as though he's whining at Fate for giving him such a hard time...
...mind-boggling to observe Macbeth making the great speech of Scene V.v funny. Examining his fingernails, eyebrows raised in annoyance, Colapinto draws out the vowels as he declaims, with the injured air of one making a justified complaint, "Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow/ Creeps in this petty pace from day to day / To the last syllable of recorded time..." Whatever the intent behind this kind of performance may be, its effect is to make Macbeth appear to us not as a "tragic figure" slowly cracking under his weight of guilt, grief and paranoia, but rather as somebody enjoying a private...
...deliberate re-reading of the character--a postmodern comedy, perhaps, along the lines of a Tom Stoppard play? If this is the idea, it doesn't seem to be working. The rest of the production interprets the text at face value; as a result, the bizarre behavior of Colapinto's Macbeth gradually renders its audience unsure whether any given line or scene is meant to be interpreted as straight drama or as comedy. The audience starts to greet dramatic scenes and speeches with nervous laughter about halfway through the play, with the result that important tragic scenes are undermined...
...difficult to believe that this is the reaction that the play's producers wanted to provoke. The problem is that whatever the reason behind Colapinto's self-centered, petulant rendition of Macbeth--be it poor judgement, a deliberate attempt at experimentation, or sheer incompetence--it undermines the drama and terror essential to the play. By subverting Macbeth's atmosphere of tragedy, Colapinto's performance ultimately prevents the production from generating the fear and explosive emotion which the play is intended to evovoke. To take the Aristotelian approach, it denies us the catharsis of tragedy. To use layman's terms...