Lady Macbeth is perhaps the most cunning, ruthless and well-known female lead in Shakespearian tragedy. But in Cincinnati Shakespeare Company’s current production of Macbeth — with the addition of a succinct original opening scene and thoughtful subtlety throughout the play — Kelly Mengelkoch has made the 500-year-old role her own.
Mengelkoch, 38, grew up in Wichita, Kansas, and has been on stage since she was five years old — save for a brief hiatus when she first attended the University of Kansas with aspirations of becoming a psychologist before fully committing to theatre.
“After college, I decided to try New York,” Mengelkoch says. “I was a fabulous waitress and an unsuccessful actress.”
It was luck that landed Mengelkoch in Cincinnati, where the seasoned actress is about complete her 14th season as an ensemble member of Cincy Shakes. While guest-directing a show in Wisconsin, Brian Isaac Phillips — CSC’s current producing artistic director — coincidentally caught one of Mengelkoch’s performances and was impressed enough to bring her back to the Queen City.
Like many stage actors, Mengelkoch was familiar with the Scottish play before its director, Miranda McGee, offered her the role of Lady Macbeth in late 2017.
In the play — which runs through May 4 — Lady Macbeth convinces her husband, Macbeth, to kill the king of Scotland and, since it’s a tragedy, pretty much everyone else also dies by the play’s close. The role is a demanding one in need of an actress who can embody passion, fear and shame while being equal parts scorned, empowered and broken down.
But this isn’t the first time Mengelkoch has played a part in Macbeth. In prior productions she was cast as Witch No. 3 and in 2011’s show she had two roles: the wife of Macbeth’s rival, Lady Macduff, and Witch No. 1.
Compared to that production, Cincy Shakes’ current iteration is set in the same period setting as Shakespeare’s original text. According to Mengelkoch, it’s also bloodier and dirtier. But the largest split between the two productions comes via the play’s opening scene, which McGee had in mind for well over a year. Lady Macbeth, in the midst of a painful labor, delivers a stillborn child. Coinciding with the intense moment, the play’s three masked witches rise from a center-stage trap door before a bloodcurdling scream from Lady M. transitions directly into the play’s opening battle scene.
“That is (her) impetus for going ‘I cannot give you a son, but I can make you a king,’ ” Mengelkoch says. “It’s very illuminative in terms of her motives and it certainly plants their love in a new, stronger place at the beginning.”
Though many productions make the character out to be evil, Mengelkoch says that, to her, she’s not evil at all. “I think she chooses dark because light let her down,” she says.
Along with her husband, Lady Macbeth silently acknowledges a shrine commemorating her would-be child throughout the first act; her body language remains fixated on her stomach for the duration of the play and she shows a dexterously faint affection toward the few children that share the stage with her.
Undoubtedly, Lady Macbeth’s most famous scene is her final one — commonly referred to as “the sleepwalking scene” — during which she is so wracked with guilt that, though her eyes are open, her sense is shut out.
“I’m trying to play it as honestly and specifically as I can,” Mengelkoch says. “Taking each of those lines in her sleepwalking meditation and specifying them back to moments in the arc of the play.”
At the preview of the performance, Mengelkoch delivered a show-stopping start to the fifth act; she begins the famous scene by wordlessly caressing a small doll before walking downstairs and reciting her lines with an emotionless face. During key lines, she transports us back to moments of the play’s past, emulating them with her body movements and vocal inflections.
The play reveals that Lady Macbeth is not the vindictive temptress many have typecast her to be. Instead she is a woman driven to the brink by feelings of guilt and inadequacy due to the loss of her child. Having failed to do what, at the time, was her womanly duty, Lady Macbeth had no choice but to provide for her husband the only other possible way: by convincing him to kill his way to the top.
Mengelkoch’s ability to combine technical acting skills with a deep sense of empathy for a complex character is the unmistakable driving force for this production of Macbeth.
Cincinnati Shakespeare Company’s production of Macbeth runs through May 4. More info/tickets: cincyshakes.com.
