(Credit: Lightyear Entertainment)

Voodoo Macbeth is a light, entertaining theatrical drama based on real fascinating events. A production of the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts, it premiered at the Pan-African Film Festival in 2021 before being taken up by Warner Brothers and re-released this year – the very first USC production to secure a theatrical release. 

The story involves post-war America, a Harlem theatre legend, a young Orson Welles, and an interesting but doomed production of Macbeth put together by a scriptwriting collaboration among USC student and filmmaker-in-training Amri Rigby, the film’s director Agazi Desta, and writer Chris Tarricone.

In 1935, the US government established a wide variety of make-work projects and subsidised activities in an attempt to offset the dire effects of the Great Depression. One of these was the Federal Theatre Project, which funded live performances nationwide. Typical of the time, it included a separate project for Black actors and theatres. The most active of these was the Negro Theatre Unit in Harlem, New York, co-founded and ran by Rose McClendon – a talented actor and director and the heroine of the production, played in the film by Inger Tudor.

The film begins with McClendon’s determined efforts to stage an all-Black production of Macbeth at the main theatre in Harlem, aided by producer John Houseman (Daniel Kuhlman), who would go on to produce countless films and head the drama department of the Juilliard School. The company’s choice for the director is an untried but promising 20-year-old Orson Welles, played by Jewell Wilson Bridges in his first feature film performance.

Guided by his long-suffering wife, Virginia (June Schreiner), he develops a concept for the Harlem production and moves enthusiastically into casting and rehearsals. Bridges portrays Orson Welles as the persona familiar from his later, more prosperous years: clever, energetic, and full of enthusiasm, but also vain, overbearing, self-absorbed, and lacking in judgment – a combination that hinders as often as it helps the play’s progress. Welles has a working relationship with McClendon and others that involves Welles alternating between accepting their input and thoughtlessly overruling them, making the backstage atmosphere tense and a bit disorganised. 

The process of readying the play is beset with troubles from the beginning – not only the ‘cursed play’ occurrences but financial problems, personal conflicts, and the lack of trained actors and stage crew in the community. Rose McClendon, as Lady Macbeth, sets an example for the other actors; and when Welles dismisses his Macbeth and replaces him with gifted actor Jack Carter (Gary McDonald), the production begins to look promising. The actors portraying the cast of Macbeth, including Jeremy Tardy, Wrekless Watson, and Ashli Haynes, are equally adept at playing uncertain novice actors and actors who have finally gained their footing, as the script requires.

The theatre group’s offbeat adaptation of Macbeth is an eye-catching part of the story and gives the film its title. Rather than perform MacBeth as the tale of a Scottish king, set in Scotland, but with a gratuitously African-American cast, the Harlem production is set in Haiti, with all the cultural changes necessary. For example, the three witches are rebranded as Haitian voodoo witchdoctors. It is the unusual staging decisions that cause further problems for the play when local officials become offended by the “foreign” and “too Black” nature of the production – and the supposed radical political messages they read into it – and take action to sabotage it.

The film does a reasonably good job portraying the growing tension in the company, coming from a combination of outside pressure, members’ lack of resources and experience, and Welles’ increasing obsession with an unreachable level of perfection. As opening night approaches, the production continues to be plagued by bad luck of every possible kind. From illness to alcohol abuse, government interference to racial strife, all of it is only made worse by Orson Welles’ ill-considered attempts to make the play a success. In a happy but far too abrupt turn, the play is salvaged – barely – and in the final act, we are treated to an approximation of the actual stage play that opened to completely unexpected success in 1936.

While not a perfect film, Voodoo Macbeth takes pains to capture the era, from allowing for 1930s attitudes to a scene in a coffeehouse which included, as minor background, a poetry reading by a young Langston Hughes. The film presents a fascinating bit of theatre and film history, placed in its historical context, which any movie buff would certainly enjoy.