BLOSSOMING Kirkbymoorside theatre talent Jolley Gosnold, now studying in London, brings his new stage company home to North Yorkshire on Saturday.
Plesion, his new and exciting London theatre enterprise, will stage Goodnight Macbeth, a two-handed retelling of Shakespeare's Scottish play, at Helmsley Arts Centre at 7.30pm.
Adapted and directed by Jolley, Goodnight Macbeth is set in 2025, when the Scottish Nationalists have succeeded in their armed struggle for independence but must now deal with the ensuing in-fighting and destruction.
Lady Macbeth, driven mad by the struggle and housed in an institution, is forced to confront the events leading to her incarceration in a "dynamic and powerful production guaranteed to both challenge and entertain".
"This year commemorates 400 years since William Shakespeare’s death, so our production is a celebration of his work and is delivered with a commitment to keeping his work relevant and exciting for the next generation," says Jolley, whose cast brings together two emerging London actors, Max Keeble and Sabrina Messer.
Kirkbymoorside theatre director Jolley Gosnold
"Max and Sabrina take on the thrilling task of telling the entire story of Shakespeare’s Macbeth but without the play’s usual 30-plus cast size, as the pair command the stage and lead the audience on a dark bloody journey into their world. It's 75 minutes of being on the edge of your seat as this story is told in a way it's never been told before”
Jolley is excited to be staging Goodnight Macbeth to Helmsley Arts Centre. "It’s a great venue with an exciting future and commitment to bringing new work and companies in," he says. "Artistic director Em Whitfield Brooks is doing amazing work there and I’m really honoured to be asked to bring our show to Helmsley and be part of the arts scene I grew up in.”
Jolley is studying at the University of the Arts' Drama Centre in London, where he was awarded one of only five places on the four-year MA course in directing in 2014.
He last presented a play in North Yorkshire in June that year when he directed the Rowntree Players in Charlotte Keatley's My Mother Said I Never Should at the Joseph Rowntree Theatre in York at the age of 19.
Goodnight Macbeth arrives in Helmsley after shows in London and a performance in Scotland. Tickets cost £11, under 18s £5.50, on 01439 771700 or at helmsleyarts.co.uk
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