Shakespeare with a twist

It sounds like a strange pairing, but one Canadian artist is bringing two dysfunctional families with centuries between them together on the Shenkman Arts Centre stage.

The result, called MacHomer, is a “funny, silly and fast” comedy that’s sure to please everyone, says actor and creator Rick Miller.

A one-man vocal spectacular, MacHomer sees Miller performing over 50 voice impressions from the cast of The Simpsons. For those familiar with the Springfield family, Miller likens his performance to an extended Simpsons Halloween episode in which the characters are cast in a strange production of Macbeth.

Moving back and forth quickly between characters and voices, Miller says the play is “kind of crazy,” calling it a “vocal, acrobatic feat.” But with years of vocal training under his belt and after performing the piece off and on for the past 14 years, the Montreal-born actor has the delivery down to a fine art.

In what Miller calls a “brutally edited” version of the Shakespearean tragedy, Homer takes on the main role of Macbeth. Having Homer take the lead is ideal because he forgets his lines and starts seeing pizzas instead of ghosts, Miller says.

There are a lot of jokes in the performance, some about Macbeth and others about more timely issues, he continues. There’s a mix of comedy in the tragedy to help make it sink in deeper, Miller notes.

As for what Shakespeare might think of Miller’s treatment of his short tragedy, the actor speculates the playwright would’ve loved the Simpsons.

“(Shakespeare) was a satirist,” he says. “The Simpsons deal in satire all the time.”

He adds many children unfortunately hate Shakespeare’s works, noting he understands the difficulty in studying the pieces in school. Shakespeare’s plays, Miller says, were not intended to be read in classrooms 400 years after they were written. Instead, they were meant to be performed, he argues.

MacHomer, Miller suggests, is the perfect antidote for that dislike. By marrying the pop culture of Shakespeare’s time to that of today, Miller offers a fun way to appreciate the classics.

“One of the reasons I love doing MacHomer is the teachers see their students kind of light up to something they were utterly dead to,” Miller says. “It takes Shakespeare’s text and Simpsonizes it.”

MacHomer will be performed at the Shenkman Arts Centre Dec. 7. For more information, visit www.shenkmanarts.ca