Shakespeare's account of Scottish regicide may be rooted in myth, but 400 years later, every Anglophone schoolchild is familiar with the tale of the decorated military general whose post-war career left a trail of murders as his sole legacy. Both the perpetrator and his spouse have undergone scholarly scrutiny bent on determining motive and responsibility for the flagrant miscarriage of justice, as have the counselors whose advice is alleged to have launched our gullible G.I. on his road to destruction.
So why has it taken so long for Banquo have his say? Far from being a mere foil for Macbeth's gradual spiral into homicidal obsession, the trench-buddy whose backstory reflects a fraternal bond encompassing shared joys and sorrows ("you were there at my son's birth, and I was there when your only son died") was also a first-hand witness to the initiation of the events ending, not only in his own death, but those many innocents as well. Surely, his testimony comprises valuable input into the killer's motive.
It does, indeed. With unswerving empathy, the ghostly specter of Banquo exonerates his boon companion, placing blame for the latter's bloody deeds on fickle chance. "It could have been me" he reminds us, speculating on the possible outcomes if the Midnight Hags had predicted his ascension to the throne of Scotland, instead of his fellow-soldier's. Even as our narrator tracks the progress of his deluded comrade's atrocities, even as great gouts of gore daub his field uniform ("I hope I'm not scaring you," he apologizes), even as he marvels at the tangled course of fate that now permits him to dwell in Heaven, while condemning his best friend to hell, he never lets us forget that we, too, might have behaved as "ambitious, but not evil" Macbeth did—or would we have stood by silently, as he himself did, our hesitation at making our suspicions known ensuring our complicity in the crime?
Chicago audiences have watched Dan Waller mature in his portrayals, from scrappy slum lads to slick teen hipsters to lonely prole bachelors. The 45-minute deposition bestowed on him by Tim Crouch—recounted in a shadowy studio furnished only with an armchair and lit by flickering ceiling lights—exhibits the broad range of his experience, taking him from quiet recitation of facts to an outraged roar, delivered full-face to the camera, of "It could have been ME, but it was YOU!" followed by a shrug as he concludes, with the irony born of the eternal afterlife, "No hard feelings.”
