William Shakespeare’s Macbeth is undone, famously, by his ambition. The vision of kingship prophesied by the witches spurs him to go too far on his murderous quest for power, and his “vaulting ambition, which o’erleaps itself” ultimately destroys him. Musicals, too, it turns out, can be undone by their own ambition.
For much of Scotland, PA, this new Macbeth-inspired musical at the Roundabout’s off-Broadway Laura Pels Theatre seems to be heading for the same fate. Based on the 2001 film of the name, it charts a fry cook’s rise to the top of the food chain after he encounters three stoners who foresee his taking over the burger joint from salty Duncan (Jeb Brown).
Scotland, PA’s first act feels flagrantly overcooked, as if director Lonny Price and the show’s creators, composer-lyricist Adam Gwon (best known for the teensy-tiny one-act play Ordinary Days) and book-writer Michael Mitnick, have totally ignored the recipe. One song starts out as a fun tune for Mac (Ryan McCartan) and his unsatisfied wife, Pat (Taylor Iman Jones), about the potential to be found in fast-food drive-thrus. It starts as a gentle hoot, with the couple accompanied by the stoners (Alysha Umphress, Wonu Ogunfowora, and Kaleb Wells) on spatula and salt-shaker percussion, but somehow it stretches into an endless, full-company gospel number that fizzles a cute moment into something utterly ordinary.
That sense of strained razzmatazz extends to the production as a whole. Anna Louizos’s sliding forest and revolving kitchen seem too big and bombastic for a show about a little guy who strikes it rich by sort-of-intentionally deep-frying his boss to death. Price and his design team may be overcompensating a bit for Scotland, PA’s score. While Gwon’s writing here is far more attractive than his music for Ordinary Days, the lyrics, which should be slinging zingers at Macbeth and McDonald’s and rural Pennsylvania all at once, are often bland to the point of inertness: What can be done with a love song sentiment like “Together you and I can touch the stars/We can race through time/We can reach the sky”? Only Jones, thoughtfully and intensely animating the Lady Macbeth figure, totally transcends the material when she sings.
In its interest in traversing the snakes and ladders of an accidental serial killer and in finding the laughs in grisly on-stage deaths, Scotland, PA has a lot in common with Little Shop of Horrors, an off-Broadway cousin enjoying a splendid New York revival this fall. But unlike the late Howard Ashman, who wrote the lyrics to that show, Mitnick never makes it clear what it is he’s parodying. The phenomenon of worldwide fast-food franchises? Most of the jokes seem to be at the expense of rural poverty. And since the stoners confess from the get-go that they’re just figments of Mac’s imagination, the whole central question of Macbeth—whether it’s fate or power-hungry folly that drives our antihero’s bloody ascent—goes out the window.
Yet, somehow, Scotland, PA emerges in the second act from its stupor to pull off a suspenseful, engaging finale as the plot adheres more and more closely to that of Macbeth. Providing a few jolts of energy is peppy Megan Lawrence as F.B.I. detective Peg McDuff, on the scene to investigate Duncan’s icky death. (She’s playing a role originated by Christopher Walken on film.) There’s also some deft one-liners from Lacretta as a fast-food colleague, plus a surprisingly sweet song from Will Meyers as Duncan’s unwilling heir apparent Malcolm, who’d rather gaze longingly at the football team than flip patties. And in the tense final scenes—Pat’s eerie sleepwalking segment and a fiery confrontation between Mac and McDuff—Gwon rises to the occasion as McCartan’s Mac explodes in song with disturbing anger.
It’s telling that Scotland, PA gets its biggest laughs only after it’s turned deadly serious. It’s that uneasy mix of inevitable tragedy and joyous comedy, like loving each bite even as you know what it’s doing to your blood pressure, that really makes things sizzle. And whatever’s next on the menu for Scotland, PA, all the sound and fury whizbang in the world won’t rival the show’s fleeting moments that give into the Macbeths’ warped frustration and quiet rage.
Scotland, PA is now playing at the Laura Pels Theatre.
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