A few weeks ago I saw an uber-minimalist studio production of Macbeth. I was struck not so much by the merits and defects of the show but that it should be such a mix of good and bad. It was striking because it has always seemed to me that going to see studio theatre is a bit like playing poker. You take the risk of buying in and yet you usually walk away feeling either like a winner or a loser. Like poker, studio theatre either works and is fantastic or it doesn’t work and ends miserably. Usually, there’s not much in between.
In part, this is what makes it so much fun as a punter. Like poker, you never know whether the people opposite you have been bluffing or not. When you see adverts for a production, most studio plays seem to promise nothing less than a reinvention of theatre. As an audience member, it’s only when the lights go down that you see whether it was worth the gamble.
Was this minimalist version of Macbeth really worth it? Honestly I don’t know. At points it really worked, and at other points it really didn’t. As it trundled along you could forgive the gimmicks like Banquo skyping his kids and the pseudo-Matrix slow motion fights, because sometimes the drama really came together and was extremely compelling. But studio theatre remains a gamble because the good and bad are seldom so balanced.
Just as in poker where the pot can be split between multiple players, so too can studio dramas on occasion be an even mix of the good and the bad. But that remains a rarity.
Not only this but the stakes are particularly high for this format. A studio deals you a tricky hand in managing the suspension of disbelief. Seeing the sweat on an actor’s forehead and sitting next to the probably even sweatier director somehow stalls the nar- rative from taking of. It takes much more of a bluff to turn those imperfections into the realism of the play. But when a show really does pull it off, you remember why theatre can be such an amazing thing. This term why not try your luck?
