I hate to have to say it, but I am so over Shakespeare. It was my college major, and theaters do it with the regularity of The Nutcracker at Christmastime, and frankly, I’m barded out.
Which is not to say I am directing my overall frustration specifically at Kitchen Dog Theater’s current production of Macbeth. At 100 un-intermissioned minutes, it’s a quick dart through the castles of Scotland — almost too quick. At heart, it’s a ghost story with witches and specters and lots of blood … only no blood here, and not a lot of mood. (The design is a convoluted modernization of urban guerrillas — Che Guevara meets Patty Hearst. Didn’t work.) But the problem is not really with the production, which kept my interest though never truly engaged me; the problem is doing it at all. Let’s declare a moratorium on iambic pentameter for two years. Even a great meal needs a palate cleanser.

— Arnold Wayne Jones

Through March 5. KitchenDogTheater.com

This article appeared in the Dallas Voice print edition Feb. 11, 2011.