The Shakespeare Company’s Goblin: Macbeth is creepy improvised fun

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The Shakespeare Company with the generous support of Hit and Myth Productions fulfills its promises when it comes to their production of Goblin: MacBeth. It’s horror, fantasy, improvisation and Shakespeare all mashed together. The play is conceived by and stars Rebecca Northan and Bruce Horak in full goblin masks, involving the audience and improvising as they go.

The premise of the play is that these Goblins are visiting earth and have decided to put on Shakespeare’s Macbeth. They are interrupted several times, once by lighting designer Lyall Jovie and another time for the Shakespeare Company to give the Land Acknowledgement. When it is clear that they can take over the space to put on the play, the two goblins Kragva (Northan) and Wug (Horak) start, while the third goblin Moog (Ellis Lalonde) is the musician and sound designer.

At first, when you think that the goblins are just going to do the entire play as straight MacBeth, you get a little worried, because it’s a bit slow to get off the ground. But then Northan and Horak up their improvisational game on opening night and add insights about Shakespeare’s punctuation, rhyming couplets and add a punch of raunchiness that has to do with goblin ears. Northan’s Lady MacBeth takes up the whole stage and when the character is present, everyone pays attention. Lalonde’s music and sound design adds a layer of creepiness and his improvised tunes are impressive.

Jovie’s and Anton de Groot’s lighting design helps to highlight aspects of the narrative and creates tension, especially if the improvisation changes what is added on to the script each night. Hanne Loosen’s set design allows the artists on stage to play around, with mirrors that can be moved around and props in the lobby that become part of the show (at least it did on opening night).

This production of MacBeth is total fun, while still telling Shakespeare’s version of the Scottish general. It is smart and comical, and unifies a theatre audience as you do things together to engage in the narrative. This production demonstrates the true joy and magic of being an audience in a theatre. Also, the goblins are really creepy.

The Shakespeare Company with the generous support of Hit & Myth Productions’ Goblin: MacBeth runs until March 27th. More information is available online.

Photo Credit: Terry Manzo

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