I know I wasn't "special" in all of this. backwards into the tub, she wasn't the only one experiencing a feeling like drowning. When someone stepped past me and pushed Lady M. Now Lady Macbeth was standing stark naked right in front of me, still muttering about blood and hands, still in extreme crisis, still looking at me, still close enough to reach out and pull me to her again. When we reached another room with a half-full bathtub in it and she finally let go of my hand, she did so only to unclasp her shimmering ballgown and let it drop to her feet. Yes, there was something that could be described as erotic about the whole encounter-voyeuristic, uncomfortable, exciting. I knew the lines, all from the sleepwalking scene, but I had never known them in this way, spoken only to me, the actor's body pressed against mine, the actor's voice only in my ears. kept me very close, her arms around me, grabbing my hands, my arms, my neck, pulling my face close so she could whisper in my ear, crying, pleading, explaining. I was aware of other audience members following us, but Lady M. Lady Macbeth kept saying to me "give me your hand, give me your hand" as she dragged me at speed up five flights of dimly lit stairs. This was several steps beyond Chamber Shakespeare.
It's disconcerting to be both watching and on display, and to be so intimately involved in an actor's representation of a character's moments of intense personal crisis. Then Lady Macbeth grabbed my arm and dragged me from the room. As the image unfolded with an Artaudian sickening slowness, morphing from Macbeth 3.2 to a Felliniesque orgy to a Last Supper moving diorama, I remember thinking it was pretty cool-in the vaguely detached way of a director/academic who has seen the play way too many times and is comparing and contrasting with other experiences even while having the current one. There was the banquet scene, playing in slow motion with a room-shaking soundtrack and rock-and-roll lighting. I had been wandering around the funhouse for fifteen minutes when I hit the instantly recognizable Macbethian motherlode.
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