Murder by Timidity: BAM's Next Wave and Classic Revivals

Abstract

T he Brooklyn Academy of Music's Next Wave Festival celebrated its twentieth year this season with two classical revivals conspicuous among its theatre offerings. Anchoring the festival were glitzy, large scale productions of Euripides' Medea and Shakespeare's Macbeth by prominent directors affiliated with major theatre outfits: Deborah Warner's Medea, from Dublin's famed Abbey Theatre, and Yukio Ninagawa's Macbeth, developed in his own Ninagawa Company in Japan. Both directors delivered sensational renditions of creepy old standards, but beneath a polished veneer of competence, these productions were strangely hollow and safe. A hallmark of innovative theatre is the ability to re-open classic plays and render them in creative and original ways, but these versions of Medea and Macbeth lacked the real boldness or fresh vision one hopes for from Next Wave. Improbable as it might seem considering their content, both of these murderous plays were presented as calculated crowd pleasers, leaving the impression that as Next Wave turns twenty, BAM is intent on cultivating an audience for increasingly conventional theatre. If these productions represent a next wave of classic revivals, the term itself is in need of an overhaul.