‘Voodoo Macbeth’ Review: This USC Student Project Earns a Passing Grade, Retelling an Early Orson Welles Triumph

“Voodoo Macbeth” credits no fewer than 10 directors and eight screenwriters, all of them students of or recent graduates from the USC School of the Cinematic Arts. And arguably the most impressive thing about the USC-produced movie — a fanciful dramatization of Orson Welles’ historic 1936 New York production of “Macbeth” with an all-Black cast — is how smoothly it plays as all of one piece. To be sure, you might quibble about certain dramatic liberties the creatives have taken to embellish real-life events — or, in some cases, to completely rewrite history covered in Orson Welles biographies and documentaries. And yes, the film overall is more diverting than stirring. Still, there is a good deal more than novelty value going for this group effort.

Set during the Depression Era, “Voodoo Macbeth” begins with an introduction to the Negro Theatre Unit, an innovative federally funded offshoot of the Works Project Administration, and its two co-administrators: Rose McClendon (Inger Tudor), an accomplished Black thespian eager to fulfill her long-cherished dream to play Lady Macbeth, and John Houseman (Daniel Kuhlman), a savvy producer who insists he knows just who can make her dream come true: Orson Welles (Jewell Wilson Bridge), a 20-year-old dynamo and self-proclaimed genius who appears to be gainfully employed only when recording radio commercials.  

Welles initially turns down the gig, questioning how many Harlem residents would flock to a Shakespearean tragedy. The movie benefits greatly by subsequently minimizing any racial insensitivity on his part — but that doesn’t mean Welles is depicted in an altogether flattering light. After he is talked into accepting the directorial assignment by Virginia (June Schreiner), his actor wife, and gloms on to her suggestion that he transfer the Scottish Play to a stylized Haiti where voodoo priestesses fill in for the Weird Sisters, Welles behaves badly as an obsessive egomaniac who drinks to excess (and beyond), makes major casting decisions with a whim of iron, drives his cast — composed of a few professional performers backed by untrained novices — with little regard for their emotional state, is “inappropriate” (as he puts it, one of the film’s few dialogue anachronisms) with a female cast member, and, not surprisingly, chronically neglects his wife. Come to think of it, he doesn’t even give her credit for the Haiti idea.

And here, inevitably, is where we have to face the question: Is “Voodoo Macbeth” merely the latest in a long line of “white savior” scenarios? If the answer is a qualified no, that’s mainly because Houseman, Virginia and Welles himself indicate that the “Boy Wonder” is hardwired to be self-absorbed and self-indulgent, by turns charmingly persuasive and unreasonably demanding, with everyone in his orbit, regardless of race, creed or color.

In that regard, Bridges’ star performance — and let’s face it, this may be an ensemble cast, but he is every inch the star here — is a well-nigh fearless piece of work, as the actor, who often looks and sounds like a younger and more abrasive Jim Carrey, somehow generates a rooting interest without any noticeable concern about being likable. Indeed, when he’s called upon to convey a Mr. Nice Guy side during the final scenes, it’s hard to tell whether this is intended to be just another ruse on Welles’ part to get his way.

Bridges is first among equals in an ensemble of relatively little-known actors, with other standouts including Inger Tudor as McClendon, the Harlem Renaissance mainstay who insists that the show must go on; Wrekless Watson as Cuba Johnson, a boxer who becomes an improbably effective Macduff; Jeremy Tardy as Maurice, a repressed gay novice actor who surprises no one more than himself when he rises to the occasion after getting a serendipitous break; and Gary McDonald as Jack Carter, an alcoholic actor who, in real life, fared much better in Welles’ “Macbeth” than his fictionalized counterpart does here.

The production values are at the very least on the level of a better-than-average made-for-DVD movie, with only a few interiors suggesting the pinching of pennies and stretching of dollars. And there is genuinely discomforting relevance to a subplot involving a racist and red-baiting senator (played with apt sliminess by Hunter Bodine) who wants to cut government funding for any “subversive” theatrical production.

There also is an undeniable inside-baseball quality to “Voodoo Macbeth,” which probably will prevent it from reaching an audience outside of theater aficionados — and, perhaps, student filmmakers. But, hey, that’s not really such a small demographic, is it?  

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