Gloucestershire’s own Festival Players are taking an all-male tour of The Bard’s shortest tragedy across the UK and into Europe this summer.
In Shakespeare’s 450th birthday year, The Players mainly alfresco tour will see them step on stage for more than 30 performances of the great tale of superstition, ambition and retribution that is Macbeth.
The Players will bring their show to Britain’s oldest galleried inn – The New Inn in Northgate Street on Thursday, June 19 – a venue where it is believed the Bard’s own company performed in Elizabethan times. For details about the venue, visit: www.newinn-hotel.co.uk
The show starts at 7 pm and will be performed in the atmospheric medieval courtyard. This will be a fully seated outdoor performance with bar and food available. Tickets are available on 01452 522177, price £14 (£10 students) or via www.thefestivalplayers.org.uk
Worcestershire-based Michael Dyer, Artistic Director of The Festival Players, and former director of Cornwall’s Minack Open Air Theatre will lead the company of their 29th year of touring. Michael, who himself will play Duncan in Macbeth, will direct a small cast of seven.
Macbeth, which some believe to be a cursed drama - referring to it only as “the Scottish play”, has been a Shakespeare favourite with audiences since it was first performed at The Globe Theatre in 1611.
Michael Dyer said: “It is one of Shakespeare’s darkest and most powerful plays and his shortest tragedy. It takes the audience on a roller coaster ride from a ‘blasted heath’ to a Scottish castle and a moving forest. Three weird and mysterious sisters, a ghost-ridden banquet, murder, prophecies, visions and spells all meld together in a swirling cauldron of seat-edge drama.”
Follow The Players on Twitter: @festivalplay
