Dining Chicago

Macbeth (Steve Hadnagy) recoils from the three witches (Shawna Tucker, Sarah Pretz and Heather Townsend, from left) in City Lit Theater Company’s production of “Macbeth.” (Photo by Johnny Knight.)

City Lit Theater in Edgewater cooks up a gritty, physical version of “Macbeth,” Shakespeare’s spookiest tragedy, boiling with energy and full of sound and fury.

Rebecca Hamlin’s shadowy, cave-like set and Sean Mallory’s eerie lighting set the stage most effectively for this murderous tale, and Branimira Ivanova’s costumes — particularly the three witches’ — continue the edgy hipness of this roughhewn and sometimes surprising production.

Highlights of the performances include red-haired Cameron Feagin’s strong Lady Macbeth, even if she sometimes struck me as more like Joan Rivers than a medieval Scotswoman, and John Arthur Lewis’s fluid Banquo. Young Zack Keller is soft spoken but natural in the boy parts of Banquo’s son Fleance and the doomed son of Macduff. Greg Hardin coolly deadpans as Macbeth’s attendant and turns to some fine physical comedy as the drunken porter. Michael Sherwin puts in a moving performance as Macduff, particularly in the Act IV scene when he learns the fate of his family, and battles Macbeth (Steve Hadnagy) with vigor.

The three weird sisters (Shawna Tucker, Sarah Pretz and Heather Townsend), beautifully creepy, deliver some of their famous lines in a screechy singing chant, which adds to thier spookiness, but makes it hard to discern the words. Since they have some of the best lines of the play, that’s a bit disappointing. Some other cast members can’t shake that peculiar, singsong “i AM deCLAIMing SHAKESpeare SO i MUST … pause AT each END of LINE and STRESS my Iambs” cadence The Bard’s blank verse so often afflicts actors with.

Odd and interesting anachronisms crop up now and then throughout the play: a modern alarm buzzer, pajamas, a teddy bear, eyeglasses…. Although presumably deliberate, these intrusions occur so rarely and offhandedly that they seem like twitches, mistaken artifacts of the program’s assertion, “City Lit Theater is a dramaturg-free zone.” (The dramaturg is the crew member who, among other things, is usually responsible for maintaining a play’s historical accuracy.) Another weirdness is the Japanese butoh movements with which the entire cast begins and ends the play and the witches undertake throughout. No doubt it’s all meant to convey some message, but I sure can’t tell you what.

Director Susan Hart has paced the play to bring it in at 2 hours and 45 minutes with intermission, which isn’t bad for such a long play, though some parts of the first acts drag a bit. Overall, it’s a thought-provoking, if unpolished, take on one of Shakespeare’s greatest plays.