Macbeth, au naturale

Last Saturday night, I went to see my friend and fellow ex-Ecclesian Brandon Morrissey trod the boards at the West End Theatre in the Frog and Peach Theatre Company's production of Macbeth.  My date and I paid for our tickets, found seats in the theatre and readied ourselves for the tragic deeds to come.  Pointing to the picture of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth in bed together on the front cover of the program, we joked that it looked to be a low budget production if they couldn't find any costumes for the leads.


The show was really good--amazing sword fights, good casting, a beautifully evil Lady Macbeth, Brandon was doing great.  But the weirdest thing happened when Macbeth goes off stage left to kill the king-- he comes back having lost all his clothes.  For no apparent reason.  I mean, he wasn't even carrying the clothes he had on him when he went to kill the king.  Where did they go?  Wouldn't a pile of his clothing at the side of the bed be evidence?  Doesn't he watch any crime dramas?  What's going on here?  Did he stash them in a broom closet?  I don't know, but there he is, having a fully normal conversation with his Lady standing in a hallway, stark naked and covered in blood.  I couldn't make heads or tails of the reasoning, but Lady Macbeth seemed to think it was a perfectly logical thing to do, because when she went off to check on the King (and his drunken guards) she came back less than 30 seconds later wearing no clothes either.  Wow.  

Full male nudity in a forty person theatre. What's a girl to do in those situations?   I was just so shocked by the weirdness of it.  It was in half-light, so I confess for a good part of the scene I was trying to figure out if he was really naked.   Which just makes a person stare harder.  Once I figured out that, yes, that man's junk is really out there on display, I tried to avert my eyes and keep paying attention to the dialogue-- after all, they did just commit murder, which I thought was pretty serious business.  But who are we kidding-- NOBODY in that theatre was listening to a word they said because we're all gawking/reacting/comparing/criticizing/envying these naked people.

Guess we were half-right about their being no budget for costuming, and least for five minutes of the show.