AUDIO: MacHomer - The Simpsons Do Macbeth (1995)

[Ryan Goble]

To The Best of Our Knowledge

from Wisconsin Public Radio

Program 05-05-01-A During rehearsals of Shakespeare's tragedy, MacBeth, one young actor found himself in the mood for mirth. And then, like a specter rising from the mists, something began to take shape. A new MacBeth for the ages - but this time around, fewer daggers, more donuts. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, the Simpsons do Shakespeare in the one-man comedy, MacHomer.  Listen!

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The following is from: http://www.canadianshakespeares.ca/a_machomer.cfm

MacHomer: The Simpsons Do Macbeth (1995)

Rick Miller with Jelly-Doughnut

Rick Miller

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Link to Database

Like his predecessor Rich Little, Rick Miller has a gift for performing comic impressions; unlike his predecessor, Miller has transformed this mode of stand-up comedy into a rather more ambitious performance: a one-man stage adaptation of Shakespeare's Scottish play, as interpreted by almost the entire cast of The Simpsons.

The result is MacHomer, which opened to fringe festival acclaim in 1996 and has been touring North America, Australia, and the UK ever since. MacHomer is a frenetic, multimedia "de-formation and adaptation" (Fischlin, "Nation and/as Adaptation" 316) of iambic pentameter, sound bites, slapstick, puppet shows, video clips, voice-overs, and non sequiturs, as Miller's Homer takes the lead role and steers it like a drunk driver to its fate at Dunsinane. 

True to the Fox television program it parodies, MacHomer includes numerous allusions to and quotations from other popular culture artifacts and celebrities, such as Braveheart, Cheers, West Side Story, Sean Connery, The Muppet Show, Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody", The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, O. J. Simpson, and The Simpsons' potty-mouth rival South Park.

The supersaturation of this play with such allusions, together with the surprising amount of original (if playfully delivered) Shakespearean dialogue, suggest that, in at least two important respects, there's more (and, simultaneously, perhaps less) going on in MacHomer than what Richard Burt has called "dumbed down Shakespeare" (Unspeakable Shaxxxspeares, 5).

[Dana Huff]

This is great! Don't you love Sir Ian McKellen's voice? One of my students saw MacHomer when Rick Miller performed it here in Georgia. He said it was great.

[Ryan Goble]

I never saw it either, just had this archived - maybe sometime when we're older, eh?