You have to hand it to Julian Chenery. He cheerfully rewrites Shakespeare and jollies it up with music and has been entrancing school and family audiences with his creations for some years now via his successful company Shakespeare 4 Kidz.
Unlike many conventional theatre-in-education companies S4K is even weathering the axing of the National Curriculum English tests at 13+ because, Chenery says, helping children prepare for Shakespeare tests has never been the be all and end all (spot the quote) of what the company does.
Now he’s planning to be on the road again later this year with the Scottish Play aka Macbeth following a spring tour of Romeo and Juliet and The Tempest.
The show has been pretty well received each of the five times it has toured since its premiere in 2000 and the ebullient Chenery is confident that the play will be a winner once again.
He weaves Shakespeare’s most famous lines into modern language with some songs and dances. The result, he insists, is a two hour entertainment which everyone - even the youngest primary kids - can understand.
And he is undaunted by, though wary of, the superstitions which haunt the Bard’s tragedy. ‘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!’
Macbeth opens at the Palace Theatre, Mansfield on Tuesday September 8 and travels across the UK until Friday November 27. A good way of introducing reluctant youngsters to their heritage? Try it and see. Tell them something wicked this way comes.
* Picture shows Jason Lee Scott in Shakespeare 4 Kidz previous production of Macbeth.
