BARD BEHAVIOUR

It’s got singing, dancing and knock-knock jokes- not something you can usually say about William Shakespeare’s Macbeth.

However, this week at the Charter Theatre, Preston’s schoolchildren were treated to an irreverent new adaption of the bard’s famous tragedy, courtesy of theatre company Shakespeare4kidz.

“It started out as just one project for a school and it’s just snowballed from there,” said actor Richard Foster-King, who is playing one of the three witches.

The company uses the most famous lines from the original Shakespeare text, together with modern language and some songs and dances to produce a play suitable for a young audience.

“It’s all about trying to make Shakespeare more accessible for kids,” Foster-King added.

Writer and director Julian Chenery’s aim is to get people to love Shakespeare by catching them when they’re young.

He said:  “A lot of people think Shakespeare is another word for boring. Not if they’ve seen an S4K version!”

Amongst the audience at Friday’s performance were pupils from Lytham Hall Park School in Lancashire.

Ten-year-old Elliot said: “It was very scary but I liked the funny man who did the knock-knock jokes.”

“I liked the music and singing. We saw Romeo and Juliet last year and that was good too,” said Elizabeth, 10.

Head of the school, Mrs Vickers said: “We have come every year for the past nine years. It gets the kids really fired up about Shakespeare and they talk about it afterwards.”

S4K has some famous fans including Stephen Fry and winner of ITV’s ‘I’m A Celebrity’ Joe Pasquale, who have both sent the cast good luck messages as they perform the notoriously cursed ‘Scottish Play’.

Julian revealed that the company’s previous productions of Macbeth have fallen foul of bad luck.

“In 2000 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,” he said.

Thankfully, this year’s cast enjoyed an injury-free performance as they entertained their young audience.

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