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On one level, this is crazy wrong.

10/30/2009 Gazette - Online, The “Is this a dagger which I see before me?” Sly pause. “Or a pizza?” Ecstasy. “Wooooh, peeetsaaaa.” Then the voice of Homer Simpson — actually, the voice of “MacHomer,” the title character in Rick Miller's one-man collision between “MacBeth” and “The Simpsons” — slides into a trademark gargle of lust, drool and waning consciousness. “MacHomer” runs Wednesday through Nov. 8 at TheatreWorks. “It was a cast party joke that turned into stand-up that turned into a play,” explains Miller, a Canadian actor who does voices for cartoons, tours with this and other solo productions and appears in New York in a nine-hour, avante-garde play directed by Robert LaPage. “I hadn't conceived of it like this, but I happen to like crashing things together and seeing what comes of the sparks.” Miller knew “MacBeth” when he started: He'd played Murderer No. 2 in the production that spawned the piece. It took him about six months, though, to master the voices — much of it spent in his car, listening to tapes he'd made from the Fox TV show. He didn't want the neighbors wondering about what was going on beyond the apartment wall. “Ohhhhhhh, don't cry for me,” he demonstrates loudly in Barney's barking-boozy-tragic voice, “I'm already dead.” Miller does this a lot. In the course of a 30-minute phone conversation, Marge Simpson talks a bit about acting, Montgomery Burns chortles smugly and Krusty the Clown mumbles dejectedly about ... well, it's hard to tell. It's like a tiny slice of “MacHomer,” which has been performed more than 700 times and in 150 cities all over the world, but in this case, without the Red Bull pacing and the Shakespearean verse. Although “MacBeth's” cast is small, about 50 voices make appearances, sometimes accompanied by visual cues drawn by Miller on a video screen above the stage. Marge Simpson's dark side emerges in her Lady MacBeth. Barney, not surprisingly, plays McDuff (a nod to the character's favorite beverage, Duff Beer). Montgomery Burns plays the doomed King Duncan. And Ned Flanders takes on Banquo, MacBeth's apparent rival for Duncan's throne. (“Oh, hey there, strangeritos, what's with the old traperooney?” says the always genial Flanders when he sees the trap that ends his life.) You have to wonder if “Simpsons” creator Matt Groening is aware of Miller's brainchild. In fact, Miller met Groening and the cast at a festival in Edinburgh, Scotland. “I became a kind of party trick for them,” he says, adding that Groening gave Miller his blessing and so far, no lawyers have countermanded Groening's good will. But Miller doesn't want to be known as the guy who does “Simpsons” voices, he says, and no sequels are in the works. Instead, Miller has a surprisingly high-minded goal in mind: to invigorate a work that Shakespeare meant to be as entertaining as it was dramatic. “I want to represent not only ‘The Simpsons' but to create an interesting production of ‘MacBeth,'” says Miller, who does not consider himself an impressionist. “I have Shakespeare fans in the audience and ‘Simpsons' fans. So the bar is set very high.” But it can be disorienting, no matter why you're there. You have to think about it like one of “The Simpsons” Halloween specials, he says. “The way they're yanked out of context and free to kill each other. This is one of those weird hybrids.” Shakespeare fans, you're on your own. “machomer” When: 8 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday; 2 p.m. Saturday and Sunday Where: Dusty Loo Bon Vivant Theatre, University Hall, UCCS, 1420 Austin Bluffs Parkway Tickets: $35; 255-3232, theatreworkscs.org