Beatles or Macbeth? Bard on the Beach offers Shakespeare fans a summer of love and tragedy
Festival begins 29th season with 'frothy' take on As You Like It and murder-filled Macbeth
Shakespeare fans face the choice of two very different productions with the launch of the Bard on the Beach festival's 29th season.
Macbeth, Shakespeare's great tragedy full of blood and murder, will alternate with a 1960s-themed production of As You Like It, a sweet comedy soundtracked by music from The Beatles.
"To be able to come and see a light, frothy comedy like As You Like It, and then come and see the bleak darkness, danger and terror of Macbeth — it's just a perfect combination, and so that's why I programmed it," artistic director Christopher Gaze told Angela Sterritt, guest host of CBC's On the Coast.
'Huge amount of fun'
As You Like It has been reimagined in Kitsilano in the 1960s and features 25 Beatles classics including I Want to Hold Your Hand and All You Need is Love.
Gaze says Bard on the Beach was able to secure the song rights for the summer.
He said it was straightforward to find lyrics that fit contextually with the play, simply because the band wrote so much material.
"It makes for a huge amount of fun," he said of the play, which will begin showing on June 12.
In contrast, Macbeth, which launched the festival Wednesday, will retain its Shakespearean roots, taking place in the era Shakespeare intended and with no special effects.
"It's great to be able to do a production that is slap bang in the time that Shakespeare wrote it," said Gaze.
"Director Chris Abraham very brilliantly has drawn it together in that way and so all the shocking, and danger the excitement of the story is really created by the actors. There are no astonishing special effects."
This season, festival-goers can also catch two new productions: Shakespeare's Timon of Athens, with a female-dominated cast (beginning June 26), and a Bard-commissioned adaptation of Aristophanes' comedy Lysistrata (from July 6).