A Trip to the Theatre

Last night my son and I went to the newly renovated Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford as he had tickets for the play which has just opened.

The new theatre is great - I was worried it would be too large - but its a similar size and layout to the atmospheric Courtyard Theatre the Royal Shakespeare Company has been using whilst work was done on the main theatre. The new theatre is small and intimate and with seats surrounding 3 sides of the stage you feel part of the action. The location of the theatre is superb right on the banks of the River Avon.

We went to see Macbeth - the first major play to be performed in the newly opened theatre. It was a superb, although chilling, performance with great visual imagery and was set during Reformation times with a brilliant set. Its a play I have always wanted to see and it certainly lived up to expectations.

As some light relief from the horrors and evils of the play, there was a piece of comedy in one of the scenes with some action that made the audience jump out of their skins. The only part I wasn't sure about was the decision to portray the weird sisters as children which meant leaving out the usual atmospheric opening scene of the play. The appearance of the children suspended in mid-air as though hanging was a scene to make you shudder and the decision to use children to make the prophecies became clear later in the play. I won't say too much more in case anyone who visits this blog is planning a trip to see the play.