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| S4K's Macbeth - Felixstowe Preview |
Macbeth Is Wicked FunWritten by GilesFriday, 22 January 2010 The notorious Scottish Play - Macbeth - is getting the unique Shakespeare 4 Kidz treatment. Starting its hit UK tour last September, the show is coming to The Spa Pavilion Theatre next Tuesday. It’s full of weird witches and spooky spells that make Harry Potter and his friends look like amateurs. There are bloody battles, gruesome ghosts and even a forest which moves. And because many theatre folk believe the play to be jinxed lots of celebrities have sent the company good luck wishes, including Stephen Fry, King of the Jungle Joe Pasquale and West End actor Jonathan Pryce, who had his own bad luck stories to tell after playing Macbeth. “When I played him in Stratford, before the first night Lady Macbeth had an accident and fractured her collar bone. I fell head first down the stairs on stage and for the first time forgot my lines in the middle of a soliloquy. At the Barbican I got stuck in the lift with the three witches and was rescued just in time to make my reappearance.” Award-winning star Matthew Kelly told S4K, “I’m sending you loads of good luck for your forthcoming production of the Scottish Play. When I was at drama college I played the Porter - in a sort of vaudeville fashion! It’s still one of my greatest memories, doing that great play.” And Star Wars veteran Dave 'Darth Vader' Prowse said, “Don’t worry about The Play. The Force will be with you.” The S4K Macbeth has been very well received each of the five times it has toured since its premiere in 2000 and its creator Julian Chenery was confident that the play would be a winner once again. “The famous curse is something we’ve had our share of in the past,” he reveals. “In the autumn of 2000 we had incessant rain for three months which affected all of our get-ins and get-outs; a national fuel strike which made it nigh impossible to move the production around the UK; the actor playing Banquo hit his head on the windscreen of the cast coach; the actor playing King Duncan went down with Bell’s Palsy making half his face freeze, and one of the stage crew walked into a door and fractured her skull. Apart from that the show was a huge hit and has remained immensely popular ever since!” Shakespeare 4 Kidz plays use the most famous lines from the original texts, weave them into modern language, add some songs and dances into the mix and the result is a 2-hour entertainment which everyone - even the youngest primary school children - can understand. The whole plot is retained and all the major characters are there too, to tell the blood-soaked story of the murderous Scottish warrior who, egged on by the prophecies of three weird witches and the ambitions of his evil wife, removes every obstacle in his path until he can seize the throne for himself. Playing the role of Macbeth for the third (and hopefully lucky!) time is Jason Lee Scott, who leads the 14-strong company. The Stage said that S4K’s Macbeth “is as thrilling a production of Macbeth as I’ve seen and a lively audience of 10-year-olds at Mansfield Palace simply loved it.” WhatsOnStage said, “I wish I had been able to see the Shakespeare 4 Kidz version of Macbeth when I was at primary school.” So watch out ... something wicked this way comes, thanks to the Shakespeare 4 Kidz company. Macbeth is at The Spa Pavilion next Tuesday, 26th January at 10:30am and 1:30pm. Box office telephone: 01394 282126 CLICK HERE TO SEE THE ORIGINAL ARTICLE AND PICTURES ON THE FELIXSTOWE TV WEBSITE |
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S4K MACBETH: "Julian Chenery and Matt Gimblett have worked hard to achieve their aim of making Shakespeare appeal to all and they have succeeded with this production, if the cheers of the children and adults in the audience were anything to go by." |
