It's June, and you know what that means: Shakespeare is invading all of our parks! I have a real soft spot in my heart for Shakespeare in the Park. One of the bummers about seeing theater in the summer is spending hours inside a dark box when it's gorgeous out, and one of the bummers about seeing theater at all is that it often costs an arm and a leg.

Not so with Shakespeare in the Park! It's outside and it's free and there are few things nicer than bringing out your picnic blanket for summertime park drinking and people-watching, especially when those people are wearing crazy period garb and having sword fights. One thing that is? Seeing Macbeth, one of Shakespeare's most mean-spirited, witchy plays, in an actual cemetery! You can do this through July 25, when Portland Actors Ensemble's run of what I'm calling Cemetery Macbeth comes to an end.

The gimmick was enough on its own to get my picnic blanket out of winter storage and onto my bike, but turns out? Cemetery Macbeth is a guarantor of fun! I've seen plenty of Shakespeare (and Shakespeare-adjacent) productions in, you know, regular theaters that aren't cemeteries, and I kind of prefer the cemetery? The problem with Shakespeare—especially loyal productions—is that the Bard doesn't really benefit from proximity. If Macduff's tartan looks hella fake up-close, great, you just ruined my suspension of disbelief. And grand monologues on the meaning of life can get awful hammy when you're in a darkened box watching someone perform a couple feet away.

So let's get this out of the way: A real cemetery is much more convincing as a set than, you know, a set of a cemetery. It's perfect for Macbeth, a play that deals in the occult. One of Macbeth's highlights for me has always been its three witches. In Cemetery Macbeth, Zoe Randol, Chelsea Turner, and Caitlin Nolan looked right at home as the weird sisters, stirring cauldrons and cackling and calling out to their familiars. The also-witchy Cecily Overman delivered a steely-eyed, very compelling Lady Macbeth, and the ensemble gamely delivered Shakespeare's OG whiskey dick jokes and took part in some lighthearted audience interaction—someone in the front row poured their wine into Macbeth's (Michael Godsey's) goblet. The cast also delivered many of the play's lines with a tongue-in-cheek affect, which is perfect, because the thing about Macbeth is that while it's a tragedy, it's also funny in a way that Shakespeare's other tragedies are not. The thought of watching Hamlet, for example, NEVER sounds fun to me. But Macbeth is dark in a way that's entertaining—like their future inspirations, Frank and Claire Underwood, the Macbeths kind of get what they deserve. Plus witches!

A few things to keep in mind: This is an outdoor play performed for people eating and drinking while sitting on the ground. If you don't like sitting next to chatty teenagers who talk throughout the production, this might not be the play for you. (This happened to me, making me feel like I was approximately 1,000 years old; they left at intermission, as chatty teens are wont to do.) Given the constraints that come with playing to the elements, this is a truncated Macbeth. It leaves some things out. I didn't miss them, but maybe someone will? Finally, seeing this play will make it very hard for you not to use the word "angerly" whenever you're furious. Tread carefully.

Portland Actors Ensemble at Lone Fir Cemetery, Thurs-Sat, 7 pm, through July 25, no performance July 4, July 11 performance at Marylhurst University, free, portlandactors.org