SALT LAKE CITY, Utah, March 18, 2024 (Gephardt Daily) — What if Lady Macduff finally had her say beyond her 19 lines in the Scottish Play?
That’s the premise of Plan-B Theatre’s final show of the current season, “Bitter Lemon,” by Utah playwright Melissa Leilani Larson, a (sort of) world premiere. The play tells the story of Finlay Macbeth, who has done Lady Helen Macduff a terrible wrong. Now they are trapped, alone together, in a purgatorial waiting room. Sometimes the only escape is forgiving the unforgivable. This riff on Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” is a life-after-death journey through the strange, the empty, and everything in between. The show plays April 11 through April 28 in the Studio Theatre at the Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center in downtown Salt Lake City.
What does Plan-B mean by a (sort of) world premiere? Well, Creekside Theatre Festival in Cedar Hills, Utah, commissioned and produced a version of the show in 2019. That production involved a new cast each performance who’d never seen the script before, performing with scripts-in-hand, learning the show as the audience did. This is the fully realized production.
Larson’s past shows include “Mestiza, or Mixed,” “The Post Office,” “Pilot Program,” “The Edible Complex,” the monologues “Erasers” and “Gluten” as part of “(In)Divisible,” and “Little Karl” as part of “Radio SLAM,” at Plan-B; “Pride and Prejudice” at Hale Center Theater-Orem and “Sweetheart Come” at Pygmalion Theatre Company.
The piece is directed by artistic director Jerry Rapier, who has helmed more than 40 Plan-B productions. It features Bobby Cody as Finlay Macbeth and Yolanda Stange as Helen Macduff.
Gephardt Daily chatted with Larson, Cody, and Stange. They began rehearsals today, March 18.
Larson told us more about the process of bringing “Bitter Lemon” to the stage.
“Where it started was way back in the pre-COVID days before time,” she said. “So I guess it would have been fall of 2018. My friend Jordan Long runs a summer Shakespeare Festival in Highland that’s called the Creekside Theatre Fest. And I’ve actually had a couple of shows there; they did my ‘Pride and Prejudice’ as well and I had a show there this past summer, ‘Relative Space.’ And he commissioned me basically, he said: ‘I have this idea to do a show, that’s like a little bit different.’ And so the idea was that he wanted me to write a one-act for a man and a woman, that would not have a director and wouldn’t have any rehearsal and basically he would pair up; he would just call some actors that he knew in the area. And it would be a different pair of actors every night, and we would give them the script in a sealed envelope before they went on stage. So it’s basically a staged reading, but they know nothing about what the story is, and so they would discover the story along with the audience.
“And that’s how ‘Bitter Lemon’ was born, and I had the idea, and he basically gave me free reign to do whatever I wanted with the story, which was almost a little too much for me, right? Because I didn’t know what I wanted to do. And so they were doing the Scottish Play on their season that summer, so that’s where I had the idea to make it kind of adjacent to ‘Bitter Lemon’. I’ve always been really intrigued by Lady Macduff and her story and the tragedy of it. That her part in Shakespeare is so small and yet so kind of commanding, you’re like: ‘wait, wait, wait, wait, I want to know more about Lady Macduff.’ And then she’s just not there anymore, because of Macbeth, and so I wanted to kind of explore that a little bit. And so ‘Bitter Lemon’ kind of imagines a relationship between Lady Macduff and Macbeth, prior to the events in ‘Macbeth.'”
We asked Larson whether it feels invigorating to have the play brought to the stage as a full production.
“It was an experiment in a lot of ways, and it was a really exciting thing to do, and the actors who did it really enjoyed doing it. Liz Golden, she said it was like being pushed off a cliff in the best possible way,” Larson said. “She said: ‘I loved doing it, it was really exciting.’ And she was also the one who said: ‘I wonder what this would be like in rehearsal?’ And it was one of those things that I didn’t imagine it happening. And another theater company did it over Zoom during the pandemic, and they kind of followed the rules of the original. And then it was one of my last, if not my last, in-person Lab reading at Plan-B. I talked to Jerry, and said: ‘I’ve written this one act, and I’m wondering about whether or not it works with rehearsal because it was written for this very specific situation.’ And Jerry says, ‘Well, yeah, let’s read it and let’s see.’
“And so now it’s a really nice full circle moment, we come back to it a couple of years later and for Plan-B to approach me and say, ‘Hey, we would actually like to do this sort of world premiere.’ We’ve made some adjustments, the way the information in some of the exposition comes out to the audience is slightly different. Because, with rehearsal, the actors are more aware of what is happening in this situation than they were at Creekside, so we had to make some slight narrative adjustments. I mean, the story hasn’t changed, and we’re excited, and Yolanda and Bobby are really great. And, you know, I’m kind of nervous that it really hasn’t been done this way before, so it’s kind of like that whole getting pushed off a cliff thing again.”
We also asked Larson what it’s like to have so many of her shows being produced currently.
“It’s super exciting because it feels like I’ve just been working really hard for a really long time, and it feels earned,” she said. “And I’m very excited about that. I’ve been doing this for a while and sometimes it feels a little like making theater is shouting into the void and going, ‘Hello, here I am, here’s the story, is anyone going to come and see it?’ And so for people to notice, and for it to be happening in several different places, is nice. So it feels like, it is kind of a precipice. I don’t know what’s gonna happen next. Who knows? I don’t know what next year looks like, but this year, I’m kind of enjoying it. But also there is this like, feeling in the back of my head, and it’s me being self-deprecating. It’s like, well, maybe everyone is sick to death of me and my stuff. And that means we’re just going to stop for a while.
“Because the other thing about being a local playwright is that there are people who come, and they haven’t heard of me before, they haven’t seen that I’ve done stuff, even though I’ve been doing stuff for a while. And so for those folks, my stuff is new to them. It’s like, hopefully, they will remember for the future. It’s like, I’m not new, but people treat me like I’m new and I’m like: ‘OK, that’s fine. I feel like I’ve been here a little while’. It does sometimes make you feel a little old. I just kind of have to chuckle and be like: ‘sure, I’ve been discovered and yes, I am new.’ Like it’s sort of a world premiere. It’s kind of fun, it’s sort of new. It’s very exciting, and very gratifying, but also it feels like such a peak. It is so exciting, [but] it almost feels like there’s nowhere to go but down, which is kind of scary.”
We also asked Larson what she does to clear her mind when she needs to.
“I love to snack, which is probably bad. I like to make myself a grilled cheese sandwich, and distract myself with that,” she said. “I like to go to movies, and get some popcorn and have a good time. And I’m a jigsaw puzzle fiend; destresser of choice. So I’ll put on a TV show that I’ve watched too many times. Recently I was rewatching ‘Fargo’ and doing puzzles when I had free time.”
She added: “I love going to new places. And I’m a sucker for a museum. I love to see other shows. I love to do the touristy things; that is a very fun get-away-from-the-work situation.”
We also asked Larson if she’s seeing any theatrical trends that she’s excited about at, either locally or nationally.
“I feel like I’ve always wanted to see more BIPOC stories being told,” she said. “And I feel like there there’s always some surprises each year, and that’s always really exciting. But I feel like right now, there’s this trend to adapt old movies into musicals. I wish that would go away. Let’s do new work, let’s support new work. And so it’s really exciting when I see that new work is happening in a lot of places in this country. And when I go to London, I’m like, oh, I’ve never heard of this and sometimes it’s fun to see something new.”
We asked Larson what’s coming up next after “Bitter Lemon.”
“I have a couple of things that I’m working on,” she said. “‘Pride and Prejudice’ is happening at the Grand Theatre. The cast list was just announced, I’m very excited about it, it’s gonna be a lot of fun. That’s the first time that adaptation has been done in Salt Lake. And so I’m really excited for that to happen. That’s in May. Then I’m working on a couple of things; my current work-in-progress is a play called ‘A Form of Flattery’. It’s an original piece about a Filipino immigrant who is a self-taught artist, a painter, and gets kind of embroiled in an art forgery scandal that could potentially affect her immigration status. I’m really excited about it. It’s one of those things that had a really personal touch for me, because my mom is from the Philippines and part of the immigration story is inspired by my aunt, but it’s a very original piece. It was recently a Bay Area Playwrights Festival Honorable Mention finalist, which was really exciting.
“And then I’m working on a couple of other adaptations because people seem to like those. So I’m working on Elizabeth Gaskell’s ‘North and South,’ and Lucy Maud Montgomery’s ‘Anne of Green Gables.’ Those are really fun. I’m really excited about the possibility of both of those. I just did a comedy at UVU called ‘Gin Mummy,’ and I’m hoping to get that up here, and also in some other places. Then I’m trying to do another; I mean, high schools will contact me and say: ‘hey, what do you have for a big cast, and do you have any comedies?” And it’s like, oh, I probably should work on that. So I would like to try to take another stab at comedy, and give myself permission to be funny.”
We finally asked Larson what her writing set-up is.
“It feels like the older I get, the more I realize I’m probably a little ADHD. And I don’t like to have any music. I like to have it completely quiet. And that even means like, you know, I can hear my neighbor’s children upstairs. I’m at work right now, and there’s construction happening outside of my window and I just go AHHHHHHHH, I just want it to be like, so quiet. Because with music, I find I get really enthralled by it. I find music to be very emotional. And then I can’t work and listen to music because I just want to listen to the music.
“I write a lot by hand. I get myself a nice pen, as a present, whenever I have a show open. I find that there’s something very visceral about writing by hand. I have to think about it; if I don’t think about it, I just write too fast and it’s illegible. And I have to think about the words and I have to think about where things are going. And so I do some writing by hand. I love notebooks, I love pens. I find that when I start typing things, I’m translating, and translating, and then also potentially also doing a revision. I don’t just do a straight transcription, I’m like: ‘oh, wait, that was the wrong word.’ And I start editing as I enter it in the computer. I love Post-it notes. I use Post-it notes for my outlining, because I can rearrange them on the window, and they stay on the window forever. Yeah, oh gosh, I’ve been told my windows look a little bit like stained glass from the outside.
“Yeah, so I usually think about a story. It’s percolating for a while and then the infrastructure usually comes out in a big chunk. I much prefer the quiet; I kind of have to shut myself away. Especially if I have a deadline. You can tell when I’ve been traveling because my house is a disaster. You can tell when I have a deadline because my house is pristinely clean. Instead of writing I’m cleaning my house. I feel like there’s a lot of things that I’m doing, when I should be writing, that are still part of writing. I go for walks, and I’m washing dishes and I’m thinking, but that’s part of it. It’s all part of it.”
We also asked Cody and Stange if they could tell us more about their characters and why the characters appeal to them. Cody and Stange have known each other for decades, Cody said, but have never worked together on a full production.
“Helen is a contemporary version of Lady Macduff from ‘Macbeth,'” Stange said. “She’s powerful and strong with nothing to lose; who wouldn’t want to play a character like that?”
“Finlay is really Macbeth, a multifaceted character, brimming with ambition, regret, and vulnerability,” Cody added. “I find him appealing due to the intricate layers of his emotions and the profound journey he takes during the play. Moreover, Finlay’s relationship with Helen adds further intrigue, as their interactions are laden with tension and unresolved emotions. Playing a character like Finlay, in the current political environment, offers a unique opportunity to delve into the cautionary tale of charismatic leaders. It prompts reflection on the allure of power and the consequences of unchecked ambition. Throughout my process, I get to engage in a philosophical exploration of the complexities of leadership, morality, and the human condition, offering audiences a mirror to contemplate power dynamics in society.”
We also asked them why they feel this show is particularly relevant now, in 2024.
“I think this show will make audiences think twice about holding onto hatred and withholding forgiveness,” Stange said. Cody added: “In 2024, ‘Bitter Lemon’ remains particularly relevant, addressing timeless themes such as power, ambition, betrayal, and redemption, themes that resonate across cultures and eras. In a world rife with political intrigue, moral ambiguity, and the consequences of unchecked ambition, the play serves as a poignant reflection of contemporary society.”
For more information on the show and for tickets, click here.
