There are those who say that not every successful property is a good idea for musicalization. I don’t agree. I say if done right, anything that’s gone before can be transformed into a musical worth seeing, hearing and taking to the heart. Consider William Shakespeare’s Macbeth. If handled well by eager adapters, or by sets of disparate eager adapters, there might emerge several first-rate new tuners.
Unfortunately, in tackling the classic tragedy, bookwriter Michael Mitnick and composer-lyricist Adam Gwon haven’t executed their bold transfer with the right amount of inspiration. They set their Macbeth update in, as their Scotland, PA title indicates, Scotland, Pennsylvania in 1975, and it looks as if they stick closely to the 2001 Scotland, PA film that Billy Morrisette wrote and directed without adding a score to his Shakespeare appropriation. (I haven’t seen the flick. I also have not been to the actual Franklin County community, either.)
In this fictionalized Scotland, Pennsylvania, and among a pack of denizens who use the f-word more freely than Pennsylvanians might have in those bygone days, the Mitnick-Gwon Macbeth (Ryan McCartan)—or Mac, as he’s known to cronies—is a waiter in an underperforming burger shack called Duncan’s.
[Read Michael Sommers’ ★★★ review here.]
Mac is married to Pat (Taylor Iman Jones), who wishes she and hubby, at 30, were further along in life than they were when in their twenties. She wants out from under heavy-thumbed burger proprietor Duncan (Jeb Brown). Note that Pat is called Pat, which is as good as any first name, since Lady Macbeth doesn’t have a moniker audiences are ever let in on.
So far, so true to Shakespeare’s set-up. But Mitnick (presumably following Morrisette’s screenplay) does some fiddling that affects how his version proceeds, and the swerve undercuts the adaptation’s development. Whereas the ur-Macbeth is an acclaimed warrior and Duncan a seemingly benevolent monarch, this protagonist isn’t a big Mac but a small one. He’s a likable shlub whose clever suggestions for improving the Duncan burger business are consistently mocked by the bombastic Duncan.
The result of these characterizations is that the tender-hearted Mac begins as a fellow for whom the audience is pulling. So as Mac and Pat “McBeth” plot their rise, his turning violent alongside a more determined wife doesn’t entirely compute. As Shakespeare has it, spectators watch a man who should know better make tragic choices. As Mitnick (Morrisette?) has it, an innately good, even happy, man goes under because Shakespeare’s outline requires it.
He only becomes a marked man after his ridding Duncan’s of Duncan in, of all things, a fryolator and turning the fast-food emporium into, well, not McDonald’s but—you guessed it—McBeth’s with a familiar spiky “M.” (Set designer Anna Louizos and costume designer Tracy Christensen have fun here. Lighting designer Jeanette Oh-Suk Yew and sound designer Jon Weston have rollicking fun elsewhere, too.)
It could be that if the Lonny Price direction, the Gwon score (under Vadim Feitchner’s music direction) and the Josh Rhodes choreography were sufficiently exciting, they’d mask the Mitnick so-so-ness. But no, there simply isn’t enough. The songs are mostly okay as they crop up, although why does Duncan gleefully participate in upbeat company number “Drive Thru”—indicating that he’s being won over to a beefy Duncan’s improvement by way of Mac—only to spurn it when the dancing ends?
Also, ticket buyers may be hoping for a nifty spin when Pat, with fryolator-damaged hand, is about to sing Lady Macbeth’s “damned spot” aria. Nothing doing. All they get is a bland “Bad Dream,” which ends on the words, “Someone wake me up from this bad dream.” (Not a smart thought to put in the minds of disappointed viewers.) Gwon does insert one thoroughly delightful ditty in act two. It’s “Why I Love Football,” which Duncan’s son Malcolm (Will Meyers) intones. Malcolm plays football but not well and has an entirely other reason for swooning over the sport.
If anything does jolt Scotland, PA into life, it’s the playing, especially by McCartan, Jones, Meyers, the always electric Megan Lawrence as prying detective Peg McDuff, and, most amusingly, Jay Armstrong Johnson as Banko (notice the unBanquo-like spelling). Then there are the lively Alysha Umphress, Wonu Ogunfowora and Kaleb Wells, who appear as The Stoners—as, respectively Jessie, Stacey, and Hector. (Wells underlines the dope joke by exhaling at the curtain call.)
It’s The Stoners, who introduce this Scotland, PA and in doing so signal the much larger problem the musical presents: the strong resemblance between it and—you guessed it, or did you?—the much superior Little Shop of Horrors, which, by dizzy coincidence, is running in a picture-perfect revival only a few blocks west.
Comparisons may be odious, but not always. Sometimes they’re obligatory. They are here, because both Little Shop of Horrors and Scotland, PA are narrated by a Greek-like trio chorus. In both, a geeky guy has a sense of what’s needed to turn a failing business into a howling success. In both, the fellow’s turnaround requires the geeky guy’s resorting to crime. In both, that choice doesn’t have the happiest ending.
Surely, the Scotland, PA creators knew exactly what they were brewing in their cauldron—one eye of nerd-dom, one toe of wow-ee set enhancement, one tongue of omniscient trio, et cetera. Maybe they didn’t know. If not, they’ve been hoist on their own unaware petard. Either way, Scotland, PA is now taking up very little space on the musical-comedy map. You can’t easily get there from here.
Scotland, PA opened October 23, 2019, at the Laura Pels Theatre and runs through December 8. Tickets and information: roundabouttheatre.org
