Tiny Ninja's Mini-'Macbeth,' With Lots of Sound and Fury

By Nelson Pressley
Special to The Washington Post
Wednesday, June 13, 2007

The perpetually eclectic Shakespeare in Washington festival at last has discovered a performer who, with eerie perfection, inhabits Macbeth's line "False face must hide what false heart doth know."

Washington, meet the aptly named Mr. Smile, the star of Tiny Ninja Theater's clever "Macbeth" over the past two nights at the Kennedy Center's Millennium Stage.

Mr. Smile is a toy merely the size of a half dollar, yet his plastic smiley-face commanded director Dov Weinstein's tabletop stage, which was filled with ninja figurines the height of a quarter (only Mrs. Smile, as Lady Macbeth, was the leading man's equal in stature). The big-headed Smiles captured the ego and ambition raging inside these tragic characters, just as the coiled postures of the little, from-the-vending-machine-born ninjas created an aura of taut action for Shakespeare's briefest play.

"Macbeth" was double-extra-brief in this incarnation, which lasted less than 40 minutes. This was "Macbeth" as a third-grade fever dream, with Weinstein pausing portentously, black-gloved hands hovering godlike over the stage, before unleashing Shakespearean mayhem while making sounds like "whoosh!" and "spluh-uh-uh-AGH!"

Patrons unable to secure front-row seats might have missed the ingenuity of Weinstein's cardboard settings and props, the effective use of a cheap, battery-powered light, a miniature laser pointer, Scotch tape, etc. But the Kennedy Center anticipated that: The performance was projected on a large screen behind the stage.

Audience reaction was mixed, and to be fair, the show at times had a plastic quality, notwithstanding Weinstein's grave baritone and excited falsetto voices for the entire cast. Also, one suspects the puckish humor was slightly more concentrated back when Weinstein performed for small audiences in tight rooms.

Still, the language is genuine Shakespeare, and perhaps Macbeth's grimly murmured "All is but toys" has never been heard to better effect.

There are few, if any, theatrical villainesses like Lady Macbeth, the Shakespearean powermongress with the nerve to take down a king.

For Tiny Ninja Theater, which brings its "Tiny Ninja Theater Presents Macbeth" to the Millennium Stage beginning Monday, there was only one actress who could play such a role: a yellow smiley-face doll.

This is serious.

The brainchild of 32-year-old Dov Weinstein, Tiny Ninja Theater has developed an outsized reputation for its productions, despite its casts of inch-high vending-machine ninjas and dime-store toys. Last year, Weinstein, a one-man show who voices all of the characters and manipulates as many as 100 ninjas and smiley dolls in a scene, took his "Hamlet" to Stratford-Upon-Avon, where it was presented by the Royal Shakespeare Company. Sometimes people crack up laughing at the plays. But sometimes people also watch very seriously.

("Hamlet" was also supposed to be presented in what would have been its Washington debut, but was swapped for "Macbeth" at the last minute because it was technically more suited for the Millennium Stage.)

How does the audience actually see the tiny actors? Well, the production (and "Tiny Ninja Theater Presents Romeo and Juliet," which will be staged, mostly on an ironing board, later in the week) will use large video projections of the action.

"So it's going to be like watching the Rolling Stones," Weinstein says, with a hint of dryness.

The plays, while true to the original material, are abbreviated to 40-50 minutes. Weinstein says he decided to use the ninjas because of their versatility -- and because no one had used them to create classical theater.

They are also low-maintenance. Tiny Ninja has never lost an actor to a labor dispute. They are easily replaceable, so long as a laundromat or bodega is near and a roll of quarters handy.

We were dying to ask Weinstein: Any drama queens in the cast?

"They are nothing if not disciplined."

"Macbeth" is Monday and Tuesday; "Romeo and Juliet" is Wednesday and Thursday on the Millennium Stage as part of the Shakespeare in Washington festival.

-- Lavanya Ramanathan