`Family' of witches gives festival's `Macbeth' a different look

Date: 07/12/99 22:15

There's no place for black-hatted, broomstick-riding crones at the Heart of America Shakespeare festival this year.

Oh, no. The witches who have been appearing in "Macbeth" every other night for the last three weeks in Southmoreland Park conjure up something else altogether.

To Kathleen Warfel, who portrays one of them, their slim-fitting, floor-length dresses "could be in a current magazine fashion spread. I think they're very beautiful."

Ellen Haun, who at 11 plays the youngest witch, is concerned that witches are reputed to be "evil creatures. I want the audience to feel that maybe those witches aren't bad, they aren't out in the world to do bad things."

Audiences certainly respond to these witches. The actresses have been receiving boisterous applause at their curtain calls.

Although the "weird sisters" make only a handful of appearances, they are crucial to Shakespeare's bloody, supernatural tragedy. First they prophesy that Macbeth, a warrior who has helped quell an uprising, will become the king of Scotland; later they foretell his destruction.

The "Macbeth" witches "get done in lots of different ways," said the festival's artistic director Bruce Levitt, who staged the production that ends Saturday.

"Sometimes they're seen as a unit, not distinct personalities from one to another," he said. "Sometimes they've been old. Sometimes they've been young. Sometimes they've been men, or of mixed gender.

"Lots of people have tried to solve the challenge of the witches in different ways. Sometimes they've been flown (over the stage) like Peter Pan. As many productions as there are of `Macbeth,' there have been probably been that many approaches to the witches."

Although the witches need to project an otherworldly quality, Levitt and the actresses infused them with some here-and-now humanity, too.

"They're not going to be little green witches from another planet," he said. "I wanted the witches to care for one another."

He wanted them to be, well, one small happy family.

And they do express affection toward one another, in a way that suggests a familial sort of relationship. The actresses portraying the witches -- Levitt added one for a total of four -- range from preteen-aged to middle-aged.

Warfel, the senior member of the group, noted that she and the youngest witch, Ellen Haun, have a connection that suggests mentor and protege, or perhaps mother and daughter.

"She is the newest power, the most innocent and therefore possibly the purest power," Warfel said. "I want to be sure and teach her and guide her."

The presence of a fourth witch -- and a preteen one at that -- was Levitt's invention. Actually, his teen-age daughter suggested he give one of the witches a baby.

"Why shouldn't there be?" Levitt mused. "Just like there are children of Duncan (the Scottish king in the tale), why not a witch who is a child? There's this notion of children without guile who know things, young children who have an amoral sense of world anyway."

Levitt rejiggered bits of the three witches' dialogue to create a few lines for Ellen. He tried to choose lines for her that would convey a prescient ability.

"She's the first one to hear the drum, the first one to sense that Macbeth is coming. She's the one who knows they're going to meet with Macbeth. There is something about the innocence and youthfulness of childhood that allows her to do that. She has powers that the older ones have lost."

Implicit in the wide range of ages is "the power of generations of these bands of witches and warlocks," said actress Elizabeth Robbins. "It's coming down through the generations."

Robbins plays the most distinctive of the four witches: She shuffles, taking little mincing steps, and lets her head list to one side during much of the show.

Levitt took his inspiration for Robbins' witch from some autistic people he knows.

There is "an other worldliness about them ... a different kind of intelligence and sensory perception at work," he said. He sees that autistic model as helping to explain how the witches are able "to tempt, to predict, to entice" Macbeth, who ultimately ascends to the Scottish throne according to their prediction.

"It occurred to me that there is something childlike about autistic people, something frighteningly accurate in the way they see you, without guile," Levitt said.

The witches' costumes were designed with desert nomads in mind -- hence, the turbans. Levitt hopes the result evokes something both nomadic -- these witches presumably wander about the countryside in between their onstage reunions -- and something sensuous, too.

"I think there is a lot of sensuality in them," Levitt said. "They seduce Macbeth in their own ways. In the last scene in which they appear, I made the seduction very physical."

There's a definite satisfaction in feeling "you have this power to draw someone in and set them along a destructive path," said Kari Wahlgren, another of the witches. "It's terrible to say, but it's so much fun."

Warfel, too, relishes what she characterized as "not an evil pleasure, but a sense of accomplishment. There's a sense of pride in having him respond to us. Not really guiding him in one way or another, but presenting him with possibilities and having him choose."

A couple of weeks ago the actresses began to wonder if perhaps their supernatural powers extended beyond make-believe.

When they began their incantation in the play's first scene, rain began to fall. The rainfall continued until their second appearance, when the rain suddenly stopped.

But when they appeared again, a downpour began that caused the performance to be called off.

"We all got a big, eerie chuckle," said actress Wahlgren.

To reach Karen Uhlenhuth, features reporter for The Star, call (816) 234-4783 or send e-mail to kuhlenhuth@kcstar.com