Show Tellers Teller's filled blood-filled production Macbeth of Peter Marks The Washington Post For a guy who gets paid f plenty not to talk Teller the silent half of the i magic team Penn Teller puts a lot of stock in the importance of words Or at least that's the impression he gives when immersed in the job of directing Shakespeare Yes you heard right These days when Teller has not been performing with his large loquacious partner in their standing 46 weeks-a weeks year gig at the Rio Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas hes he's been hanging out on the stage and in the rehearsal halls of a little theater company in this old business hub close to the Jersey Shore The project the obsession is an illusion- illusion and filled blood-filled production of the Shakespearean tragedy Macbeth a production that Teller 59 in a sense has been working on all his life And now in directorial collaboration with Aaron the artistic head of Red Banks Bank's Two River Theater Company the professional magician is applying his sleight-of-hand sleight skills to a play chockablock with ghosts and witches and other aspects of the supernatural that seem a natural showcase for his peculiar talents People who have come cometo to see it have said to me The show feels exactly like you Teller remarks over an impromptu lunch a afew afew afew few days into the Red Bank run The look on his impish features suggests a kind of studious pleasure They say to me Its like being inside your head The next stop for this Macbeth after concluding its stay in New Jersey a week from Sunday is Washington at the Folger Theatre a full partner in the venture Feb 28 through April 13 A measure of the interest in Tellers Teller's participation as director co-director is that the production is garnering a level of heavyweight attention that rarely accrues to Shakespeare at a regional theater The Wall Street Journal and NPR for instance have weighed in with feature articles and producers from New York have been spotted in the Two River audience soon to complete his first season as Two Rivers River's artistic director is not a stranger to audiences at Folger where hes he's staged r x ar r i lu I W f f Photo for The Washington I Post by I Helayne I t I Master illusionist Teller of Penn Teller fame is directing co-directing a New Jersey production of Macbeth with Aaron right a number of Shakespeare's plays Most notably he directed a moving and innovative Measure for Measure there in 2006 an adaptation that firmly stamped him as as a thoughtful interpreter of the Bard Measure standout Ian Merrill Peakes signed on as this Macbeth and another Folger stalwart Kate Eastwood Norris was cast as his Lady Macbeth No matter how much Elizabethan experience these artists bring to the enterprise though the version has quickly come cometo to be regarded as Tellers Teller's Macbeth And although some ticket holders arrive at Two Rivers River's handsome headquarters on Bridge Avenue imagining something like a magic act in iambic pentameter the fact is that Tellers Teller's wand is waved only sparingly over the proceedings Theres nothing in inthe inthe inthe the production Teller explains that Shakespeare doesn't place before us who worked in theater in Philadelphia for many years and Teller who comes from that city met there a decade ago at the where was directing a production of A Midsummer Nights Night's Dream and Teller a friend of another of the Arden's founders agreed to help provide some ideas But the Shakespeare that Teller had fallen in love with as a kid was Macbeth and it was not until got the job jobin in Red Bank that the two could set in motion their plan for a version of the Scottish play that mined all its story horror-story potential Teller loves reading the text out loud observes with no irony intended He loves the words So we read the play to each other and just talked it through and said Where are the key moments Accustomed too to the sophisticated technical resources of Las Vegas and Hollywood Teller was not immediately on the same wavelength as the show show- shoe shoe- theat theater shoestring on-a-shoestring r people Teller didn't seem to understand says with a laugh that an eight- eight hour design meeting isn't the norm i A AJiE JiE Soon however however thanks to Teller th the staff was being supple supplemented by byan byan byan an unusually experienced roster of help helpers rs a magic magie consultant Matthew Holtzclaw a mask and special-effects special makeup designer Frank Ippolito whose credits include Pirates of the Caribbean a aNew aNew aNew New York composer Kenny who created a cool percussive score A cutler was even hired to to forge custom-forge the swords o of the Scottish nobles It would be unfair t to give away any of the tricks Teller has devised for this this' Macbeth Suffice to to td say that some of the most most t famous illusions associated associate with the history of magiC magi acts have been adapted here Which is to say that some characters vanish and some objects levitate When Teller had t td to return to Vegas during Macbeth rehearsals it fell to Holtzclaw a Ne NewYork New y v York actor playwright an and magician to train the actors actor to get them comfortable with the techniques o of illusion The Th question was how d do you do intense emotion while hitting these specific marks to make these thes tricks happen Holtzclaw x explains In one particularly famous famous 4 scene Lady Macbeth has some serious guilt IssueS IssueS- issues to deal with manifested in her terror at an inability t tc td wash spots of blood off heir beg hands Fittingly and Tellers Teller's Macbeth makes the moment especially especially vivid and horrifying wit with the application of heaping amounts of you-know you what 2 j jJ J |