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The Tragedy of Macbeth
The Tragedy of Macbeth
The Tragedy of Macbeth, Assembly Roxy (Central), 12pm, 4-29 August (not 17)
Booking Link: https://assemblyfestival.com/whats-on/the-tragedy-of-macbeth
A classic tale of greed and guilt, this visceral and lucid interpretation of Shakespeare's blood-soaked tragedy is truly Flabbergast. Bringing to bear their award-winning work in puppetry, clowning, physical theatre and ensemble pieces, Flabbergast Theatre takes a rigorous and respectful approach to the text, combining it with exhilarating live music, a stripped-back set, a tight-knit ensemble of eight actors and an aesthetically arresting design to produce a provocative interpretation to thrill new and established theatregoers.
Henry Maynard, director, spoke to Gareth K Vile
What role do puppets play in the production?
As a practitioner I have worked extensively in puppetry including with Blind Summit, War Horse, for Paul McCartney, and Circus 1903. I have also trained a fair number of puppeteers working successfully in the industry. We started Flabbergast initially with six shows featuring the puppets Boris & Sergey and so even when the puppetry is less obvious it runs through our performances, choices and the training that I provide. Focus, fixed points, and breath underscore a great deal of our human movement and object manipulation.
In this piece Fleance and the Macduff Son are played by Bunraku style puppets, and the Doctor has a very rudimentary stick puppet much as you might picture a jester having. We toyed at the beginning with the idea of the Witches being puppets but felt finally that a more literal human embodiment helped to highlight the issues of the piece better.
As a multi-genre company, do you feel that the dramaturgy of Macbeth reflects your past productions?
Macbeth has been a deliberate period of growth for the company. It marked the inception of a new ensemble of actors (some of whom were known to the company before) and an opportunity to do a longed for research and development, whilst providing upskilling and skill sharing amongst the team.
In addition to our history with Clowning, Puppetry, Buffon and Physical Theatre we have explored Butoh, Grotowski, Lecoq, and added elements of music and sound scaping to our repertoire.
We are always interested in pushing the boundaries of what we produce, gathering and experimenting with genres of theatre is exciting to us and we feel provides a richness and depth that continues to grow, there are certainly elements to this production that are cabaret, immersive and clown inspired.
Does the puppetry fit with the other elements, such as clowning or mask work, that you use? Is there a continuity of aesthetics?
The aesthetics of Flabbergast are driven by me as the Artistic Director, and I spend a great deal of time contemplating and designing the feel and look of our work. I feel like there is a definite link between Mask, Clown and Puppetry (or at least there is in my mind) and that they all complement each other adding to the ensemble work, complicite and movement in the piece, I like faded decadence and patina and grime... old stuff. I think you can see that when comparing all of our shows, even when we use anachronistic elements they are chosen deliberately to juxtapose more natural or organic elements elsewhere.
What inspired you to work with a text -and such a famous one, too?
This is the first narrative play that we have taken on and we were keen to see whether our history in devising could bring something to a Shakespearian play, applying the theatre arts that we love to a classic and frequently done play was part of the challenge, could we bring something fresh and new?
There are a number of great themes within the play that we feel are relevant to issues now as well as of the day, gender expectation being one... the Play makes many references to the ideals of gender and the expectations placed upon us by society ‘are you a man?’ ‘you would be so much more the man’ ‘I must feel it as a man’ ‘unsex me here’ ‘bring forth men children only’ ’why do I put up that womanly defence to say I have done no harm’ it also plays upon the masculine fear of feminine power as represented by the Witches and Lady Macbeth.
We are keen to move the company into the realm of midscale theatre in order to reach new audiences and be more ambitious with our offerings I had been considering Macbeth for a while having been involved in productions of it three times before and felt a familiar play would be a good start
