MURDER MOST FOWL

Still another group of historical reenactors wreaks havoc on Caerphilly, Virginia, where bedlam already reigns supreme.

Drama professor Michael Waterston’s decision to rehearse the D.C. theater company Arena Stage’s new production of Macbeth might have seemed a good idea at the time. But it’s reopened old scars in Drama’s running battle with Caerphilly College’s English department and forced Drama into an uneasy alliance with History that’s already showing some strain. Case in point: a deeply misbegotten invitation to the Dystopian Alternate Realities Krew to establish Camp Birnam, an 11th-century Scottish reenactment. DARK leader Calum MacLeod, ne Christopher Miller, is clearly off the rails. So is documentary filmmaker Damien Goodwin, who’s both a nuisance and a crank. Celia Rivers, the production’s Lady Macbeth, is beset by mounting digestive distress, and the mean girls led by Gina, the Second Witch, seem intent on outdoing the three weird sisters. And of course there’s the obligatory vandalism of property and mistreatment of animals. Following a screening of a Goodwin supercut video that delights in catching everyone from self-anointed Shakespeare professor Desmond Philpotts to Russ Brainard, who plays Banquo, in embarrassing situations, the documentarist is bashed to death with his own camera. Luckily, Michael’s battle-hardened wife, ornamental blacksmith Meg Langslow, is on hand to help police chief Henry Burke and senior deputy Vern Shiffley overcome the curse of the Scottish play, sift through layers and layers of mischief, and choose from among all these zanies the perpetrators of a surprisingly expansive flock of actual crimes.

Fans will appreciate the helpful final chapter, which indicates exactly which malefactors have earned which legal punishment.