Shakespeare's Macbeth

‘Stars hide your fires! Let not light see my black and deep desires...’ Shakespeare’s darkest play hits the stage this season in a lean, mean, contemporary interpretation.

Hot off the smash success of The Who’s Rock Musical ‘Tommy’ Stage Two’s James Wenley adapts, directs and showcases Macbeth’s wicked scheming as it collides with the modern underbelly of the criminal world, the sordid night time city scene and the cunning supernatural forces belonging to ambiguous ladies of the night, more formally recognised as witches.

Wenley’s version, of what is superstitiously known as ‘The Scottish Play’, includes a post-apocalyptic like setting, subversive performances of hit pop songs and hallucinogenic visions of what might have been, however he claims he is still making an attempt to stay faithful to Shakespeare’s text and themes. ‘Concepts like power, ambition, greed, regret and revenge don’t just belong to the Elizabethans’ he says, ‘look around you, they are still utterly relevant in modern society, they are in your social hierarchies, your homes and your hearts.’

With a seventeen member cast Stage Two’s Macbeth boasts the talent of many Auckland University students and alumni, among them, Luke Thornborough as Macbeth (The Libertine, Richard III), who accompanied by Witch Ashleigh Rose Keating has performed at The Globe Theatre in London, Sophia Panayodiu as Lady Macbeth (Suburbia, Virgin Party) and Patrick Graham (Titus Andronicus, White Trash Omnibus, Pink Lighter) as Hecate.

As Shakespeare critic Harold Bloom puts it ‘the little Macbeth within each theatregoer can be tempted to surmise a murder or two of her or his own’. Macbeth opens on Wednesday 26th May and runs till Saturday 5th June at The Musgrove Studio, Maidment Theatre. Murder, prophecy and a dance floor...how far would you go?

Event listed by James Wenley

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