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The snippets of music between scene changes of Aden Ross' new play "Lady Macbeth" could not have been better chosen.
Soon after the Fool reveals his plot against his own Lady Macbeth, we hear Queen's "Killer Queen." When Portia crosses over into her male character Portus, and Iago becomes his female character Iona in gender-bending costume changes, we hear Nirvana's "Come As You Are." Throughout, the audience is also treated to liberal doses of Journey's "Don't Stop Believing."
The intriguing twist is that all those songs are delivered not by rock bands proper, but by a string quartet.
This same formula of a classical medium delivering contexts of contemporary politics and pop culture forms pervades the spiky, almost ingenious script of Aden Ross' new play. And what a high-wire act it is, with eight Shakespeare characters speaking reworked and inverted lines from the playwright's major tragedies — "Macbeth" and "Hamlet" most prominently — plus a heavy dose of "Twelfth Night."
"Lady Macbeth" sets its tone from the get go, never letting go of its abundant wordplay and gymnastic-like stretching of various Shakespearean conventions to highlight the dim-witted, but never witless, nature of its title character, played by Michelle Peterson. This Lady Macbeth is an amalgam of Sarah Palin, and for those old enough to recall, Vice President Dan Quayle, plus a healthy dose of George W. Bush. But true to the liberal critique of the former president, she's a vain, ambitious dunderhead prone to malaprops.
"After I banish the courts ... I can deregularize everything. So we can spread Scotland's way of life across the rest of the world," she says to her Fool, played jovially and well by actor Jason Tatom.
The play then darts across various fields of interplay between an Iago shorn of malevolence but not intelligence, played by Jay Perry, and a Portia in male drag, played by Tracie Merrill.
For good measure we also get a Malvolio who sets the record straight about Puritan tendencies, played expertly by Kirt Bateman, and an Ophelia with a healthy chip on her shoulder regarding her famous fiance, played by Lauren Noll.
Watching these character lance each other continually with lines drawn from the world's most famous canon of plays is great fun. The dialogue is biting, ripe with puns, and bawdy at all the right moments in a script alive with verbal invention. Even when these borrowed phrases land with a thud, Ross manages to squeeze them for laughs.
"Yesterday ... and yesterday ... and yesterday ... creeps in this petty pace until ... tomorrow ... becomes today," says Lady Macbeth.
The dilemma for playgoers becomes that Ross and the cast are busy having so much fun among themselves that we get lost in a thicket of laughs that don't grow into anything more. After a while, tracing the play's various lines back to their original source, then back into the context of the play at hand, begins to feel like the life of the party constantly jabbing you in the ribs after the delivery of every single one-liner.
Finally, near the play's last third, this work becomes somewhat tiresome. Like Salt Lake Acting Company's "Saturday's Voyeur" franchise, the play has the weariness of an inside joke.
What carries the story forward is Tatom's Fool, who's hatched a plot to reveal the Queen's odious motives before she can invade England. Yet "Lady Macbeth" draws little from its characters worthy of your heart and soul. For straight comedy, that's fine. For a playwright of Ross' talent, it's somewhat disappointing.
As a consolation, "Lady Macbeth's" parallels between the stage and real world are always worth a reminder.
"With weapons of mass construction, we'll unmask the players and their tricks and show how theatre resembles politics," says the Fool.
Perhaps the play's chief problem is timing. In an era of "Occupy Wall Street," most of us woke up long ago to the fact that politicians manipulate a public audience with drama. Far harder to achieve, of course, is moving our hearts.
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Facebook.com/nowsaltlake 'Lady Macbeth'
Bottom line • A precision instrument of drama that reworks Shakespeare to great comedic effect, which leaves an aftertaste of indifference.
When • Reviewed Thursday, Oct. 17; continues through Nov. 6. Thursdays-Fridays, 8 p.m.; Saturdays, 4 and 8 p.m.; Sundays, 2 p.m.
Where • Rose Wagner Center for Performing Arts' Studio Theatre, 138 W. 300 South, Salt Lake City.
Tickets • $10-$20. Call 801-355-ARTS or visit http://www.planbtheatre.org for more information.
Running time • 90 minutes, with no intermission.