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- Events > The Hothouse Press Night at Trafalgar Studios

Filming will begin in London the week of May 27. The cast currently includes Lucy Fry, Zoey Deutch, and Danila Kozlovski as the leads. Cameron Monaghan and Olga Kurylenko have also been added. Mark Waters is directing from a script by Daniel Waters.

‘Vampire Academy: Blood Sisters‘ is based off of a The New York Times best-selling novel series by Richelle Mead which tells the tale of Rose Hathaway, a 17-year-old girl who has a mental and spiritual bond with her vampire best friend Lissa. The two girls attend a special school for vampires who struggle to retain some humanity while other Vampires become more feral.

Other cast members announced yesterday also include Sami Gayle as Mia and Ashley Charles as Jesse.

Deadline states that Claire Foy is repped by WME and Management 360.

‘Macbeth‘ finished its eighty day run last Saturday. The production was a phenomenal success, was entirely sold out and surprisingly received two nominations at this year’s Olivier Awards (instead of next year’s): for Best Revival and James McAvoy for Best Actor. The Olivier Awards were held yesterday at the Royal Opera House in London and sadly the Olivier Award in the two categories didn’t go to ‘Macbeth‘ but to ‘Long Day’s Journey Into Night‘ and Luke Treadaway respectively.

Claire Foy attended the event and looked absolutely gorgeous wearing a strapless 1958 Hartnell black silk and velvet gown by William Vintage.

I added a few pictures, some of them in high quality. Enjoy!

Gallery:
Events in 2013: The Laurence Olivier Awards

On Friday, April 19, 2013, the cast of the plays ‘Macbeth‘ – now finished its run – and ‘The Hothouse‘ – opening May 4 – attended a press conference held at the ‘Macbeth‘ set at Trafalgar Studios to mark the changeover in Jamie Lloyd’s Trafalgar Transformed season of plays. Actors present included James McAvoy, Claire Foy, Simon Russell Beale, John Simm and Harry Melling.

Gallery:
- Events in 2013: ‘Macbeth’ and ‘The Hothouse’ Press Conference
- Interviews/News Segments: Trafalgar Studios | Macbeth | Press Conference

Video:
- Events: Press Conferences

from ATG’s Magazine / by Imogen Sarre & Jasper Rees

Roughly how old are the Macbeths?

We know they have had at least one child, presumed dead, but beyond that Shakespeare offers no further clue. Such is the trajectory of their moral degradation that audiences, and indeed casting directors, tend not to think of the Thane of Glamis and his wife as still having the bloom of youth on their cheeks. Thus the lead role can happily be taken on by someone in his 60s, as happened with Patrick Stewart when the play was most recently revived in the West End.

But now the Hollywood star James McAvoy brings the zip and springiness of someone known mainly for playing callow young men in the likes of The Last King of Scotland, Atonement and The Last Station. He turns 34 during his run in the role at the Trafalgar Studios, and the latest King of Scotland is joined in matrimony to Claire Foy, who turns 29 in April but looks young enough to have twice played teenagers in 2012: at the Royal Court in Mike Bartlett’s Love Love Love and in the BBC drama White Heat.

McAvoy and director Jamie Lloyd have been cooking up this much anticipated reinvention of Macbeth since they worked on Three Days of Rain in the West End four years ago, but in fact the Scottish film star has had half an eye on Macbeth for nearly a decade, since he played the lead in a BBC series Shakespeare Retold which punchily updated six of the plays to the present day.

James McAvoy on playing Macbeth in the BBC’s Shakespeare Retold series: “It was a fantastic experience,” he recalls. “I was very young. I think I was about 25 or 24. And that made me think, obviously this isn’t Shakespeare’s text but it’s quite interesting having a young Macbeth because what you get is him and Lady Macbeth perceived to be throwing away their future, all through ambition. And it makes their loss all the sadder when he delivers the ‘Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow’ speech, which is an expression of utter blackness and fatalism.” Claire Foy, playing Lady Macbeth, concurs. “I had all these received ideas about what age she should be. It’s more depressing if they’ve got their whole lives to lead.”

For both actors, their first encounters with the play were at school. Foy, like many who will come to see the production, studied it at GCSE. Aged 15, McAvoy had a more personal, even life-changing experience when the actor David Hayman, who had played Lady Macbeth at the Glasgow Citizens, came to his school to give a talk. “That was the first time I really became aware of Macbeth,” he recalls, “as well as the idea of acting as something that somebody might be able to do one day.”

He duly saw several productions – his first was in Leith “and I just remember thinking that it was thrilling”. Since formulating the desire to play the part, McAvoy has made sure not to see other productions. “I thought I’d like to do this one day and I don’t want to be bound into not doing something because I’m worried that somebody else made a similar choice.” It sounds as if, like Macbeth, he knows a thing or two about ambition.

Foy on the other hand did not have the opportunity to be quite so strategic. “I never thought that I would ever get to play this part or do Shakespeare. I wasn’t longing for it.”

And yet, unusually for a young actress in leading roles, she is at least familiar with the idea of not having the audience on her side: among several feisty and even unpleasant characters, she has played a spoilt young Fascist sympathiser in Upstairs Downstairs and a ballsy tabloid editrix in Channel 4’s hacking saga satire Hacks.

“When I got the audition for Macbeth,” she confides, “it’s awful to say it but I can see what leads her to do what she does. Her husband’s destiny has been proclaimed and she says ‘You’ve got to meet it.’ Which women do all the time.”

The Scottish play

To fit in with a predominantly Scottish ensemble, and her Scottish husband, Foy is attempting the accent. Not that McAvoy sees the Scottish play written for England’s Scottish king James I as a Scottish play. “It’s not got a Scottish voice. It’s written for an English voice. But it is historically set in a place depicted by Shakespeare as brutal and violent, incredibly superstitious, and that’s something that I do believe is Scottish.”

He is all Scottish courtesy to his co-star, mind.

“The funny thing is you would never ever ever think the man is this movie star,” says Foy. “He’s just so down to earth. He could turn round to me and go ‘Your accent is shocking!’ I have to remind myself to actually stop looking at him.”

I added screencaptures and a video from ‘Macbeth‘s Opening Night back in February. Also check out the updated sidebar and the special project page for ‘Macbeth‘.

Gallery:
- Interviews/News Segments: Trafalgar Studios | Macbeth | Opening Night

Video:
- Events: Premieres

Video Archive:
- Audio Clips > Interviews

GALLERY LINK:
- Stage > Macbeth by William Shakespeare – Promotion

Claire Foy (Lady Macbeth) and James McAvoy (Macbeth) attended the after party on press night for Macbeth at One Whitehall Place, London, England on 22nd February 2013.

GALLERY LINKS:
- Events in 2013 > Opening night of ‘Macbeth’ held at the Trafalgar Studios – Departures
- Events in 2013 > After Party on Press Night for ‘Macbeth’, thanks to Nicole

James McAvoy and Claire Foy posed for a photocall launching the Trafalgar Studios season with ‘Macbeth‘ on February 21, 2013 in London, England.

GALLERY LINK:
- Events in 2013 > Trafalgar Studios Production Of ‘Macbeth’ – Photocall, thanks to Nicole

Claire Foy (Lady Macbeth) and James McAvoy (Macbeth) attended the after party on press night for Macbeth at One Whitehall Place, London, England on 22nd February 2013.

GALLERY LINKS:
- Stage > Macbeth by William Shakespeare – Performances
- Events > After Party on Press Night for ‘Macbeth’

Macbeth is an apocalyptic play – a drama in which the unnatural actions of one man appear to overthrow the usual order of everything around him. The night Macbeth murders King Duncan and sets in motion his bloody ascent to the throne, Duncan’s horses go mad and start eating each other.

Jamie Lloyd’s brutal production, set in a post independent Scotland that is unlikely to do much for Alex Salmond’s campaign, evokes that sense of desperate, dystopian chaos right from the start.

Scotland is ravaged, torn apart by in-fighting, social breakdown and climate change – the witches wear gas masks. No one seems to have washed for months.

A feral, violent charge hangs in the air. Nearly every scene takes place in what looks like a makeshift bunker. The audience, pressed forward against the stage in this reconfigured auditorium with several rows of seats on the stage itself, is forced right inside this cannibalised, paranoid landscape. You can almost smell the blood.

Amid this, James McAvoy delivers a performance that will please both fans of X-Men and those who prefer his more feminine side.

Boyish, charming, initially a bit of a joker, he is soon puking in the toilet and hiding from his wife in tears behind a table. Lloyd suggests without making it too explicit that the Macbeths’ loss of a child is partly behind their killing spree – in the case of Claire Foy’s magnetic, wiry Lady Macbeth, that loss seems to have driven her insane.

For Macbeth meanwhile, one of the production’s great moments comes when he stops for just a second on hearing a child cry out after his men have killed Macduff’s wife, before ramming a sword through the cupboard.

McAvoy carefully shows how Macbeth’s external world gradually becomes a hellish internal one. There is madness here but also a terrible sanity. Right to the end he suggests an existential struggle between the path he has chosen and a clear realisation of its consequences.

There are excellent performances elsewhere – notably Jamie Ballard’s Macduff, who delivers the dreadful ‘all my pretty chickens?’ lines in tears. Lloyd perhaps piles on the apocalyptic aesthetic a bit too much but the high voltage impact is worth it. This is sinewy, grimy Shakespeare that finds full expression for the play’s extraordinarily terrifying imagery – and is a terrific start to Lloyd’s new season at the Trafalgar.

Until Apr 27, Trafalgar Studios. www.macbethwestend.com

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James McAvoy, who has appeared in hit films X Men and The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe, stars as the lead role in the modern take of one of Shakespeare’s darkest plays which opened last night.

Claire Foy, perhaps best known for her role in Little Dorrit, acts alongside him as Lady Macbeth, one of Shakespeare’s most famous female characters.

Former spin doctor Alastair Campbell and actors Rafe Spall, Toby Jones and Jason Flemyng were among guests at the Trafalgar Studios on London’s Whitehall.

The performance was met with a standing ovation, with McAvoy’s proud wife, Anne-Marie Duff, the first to rise to her feet, swiftly followed by the rest of the audience.

The play is director Jamie Lloyd’s first in a season called Trafalgar Transformed.

He said they would be “a season of politically-charged power plays on the doorstep of Whitehall”, accompanied by workshops and masterclasses aimed at school groups.

The stark stage sets the scene for a war-torn Scotland of the near future, smothered by toxic fog.

According to the programme notes, the play takes place after years of financial and environmental disasters in a divided United Kingdom.

Lloyd said: “It’s an apposite, urgent play for today, and that’s why I don’t want it to be set in period. I don’t want the production to be a reflection of a time long past, I want it to resonate here and now.”

There was widespread praise for the play, which was also attended by comedian Stephen Merchant and Downton Abbey actor Hugh Bonneville.

Merchant said: “I loved it. I loved the bloodiness of it, the passion and the youthfulness of it, which was a nice take on the play.”

There was so much gore, in fact, that the floor had to be mopped between the first and second halves.

Bonneville simply said: “James McAvoy is a brilliant actor, full stop.”

Spall said: “I thought it was extraordinary. Both James McAvoy and Claire Foy gave timeless, peerless performances.”

Singer Beverley Knight said: “Only Shakespeare himself could come up with the words to describe what I’ve just seen. I’m at a bit of a loss.

“It was so spellbinding, so intense, incredibly gripping.

“I thought I knew the play but now I’m seeing it with fresh eyes. It was absolutely unreal.”

Campbell gave his seal of approval on Twitter, writing: “James McAvoy superb Macbeth. Sounds alarmingly like @georgegalloway at times.

“Claire Foy tops as Lady M.”

Part of the transformation element has seen the auditorium reconfigured for Macbeth so that more than 70 audience members are seated on the stage.

Design is by Soutra Gilmour, who won the Best Design award at last year’s Evening Standard theatre awards.

McAvoy, who has gone from starring in film The Last King Of Scotland to the production known as “the Scottish play”, was last on stage in 2009. Three Days Of Rain, at London’s Apollo Theatre, was also directed by Lloyd.

The play, running until April 27, is almost sold out, and the remaining tickets are likely to go quickly after the first reviews in Saturday’s papers applauded the gritty, dark production.

It was given four stars by the Daily Telegraph, with Charles Spencer saying it “packs a powerful punch”.

He noted the dank and dismal setting, writing that the Macbeths’ castle “is more squalid than a student flat during the Edinburgh Fringe” and praised McAvoy’s “commanding” performance throughout.

Spencer described the production as “gripping and genuinely startling” – though he had a slight gripe about its running time of nearly three hours.

Paul Taylor in the Independent also awarded Macbeth four stars, saying McAvoy gives a “gripping, no-holds-barred performance” that will encourage his young fans to explore Shakespeare.

“Pac-a-mac ponchos” are advised by Taylor for those in the front rows on stage, due to the blood-splattered nature of the play. There are times it goes a little over-the-top, according to Taylor, but also moments of “extraordinary thematic penetration”.

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The main house of Trafalgar Studios has been reconfigured for a season of plays directed by the fast-rising director Jamie Lloyd which will examine power and politics – appropriately enough for a theatre located in Whitehall.

The stage has been raised by more than two metres, and extended out into the auditorium, bringing spectators closer to the action, and there are 70 additional seats on the stage itself. It all makes for a powerful theatrical impact in this most scary and claustrophobic of Shakespeare’s tragedies.

Macbeth often reads better than it plays. Shakespeare’s thrilling poetry of violence, darkness and fear can seem more potent in the mind’s eye than when it is visibly enacted on stage.

But there is no doubt that Lloyd’s production, set in a post-apocalyptic Scotland which has been laid waste by war and climate change, packs a powerful punch. The cast are dressed in bedraggled clothes that look like rejects from the Oxfam shop, while the Macbeths’ castle, with an on stage lavatory into which Macbeth pukes violently before killing Duncan, is more squalid that a student flat during the Edinburgh Fringe.

My chief grouse is that, with a running time of three hours, the production sometimes misses the hurtling momentum of Shakespeare’s shortest tragedy.

There is no doubt however that it creates a powerful atmosphere of evil, and there are many moments that conjure a palpable thrill of terror, not least the appearances of the witches, nightmarish creatures in sinister rubber gasmasks.

James McAvoy, best known as a film actor, proves a commanding Macbeth, and the relationship with his wife is powerfully caught. The text makes it clear that the couple had a child who died in infancy and McAvoy and Claire Foy as Lady Macbeth suggest both an undertow of grief and the sense that their murderous ambition is some kind of sick compensation for their loss.

At the start it is Foy’s Lady Macbeth who leads the way, like a bossy schoolgirl who has set her heart on becoming head-girl. Unlike his morally blind wife, however, Macbeth knows what murder will cost, and initially at least, has a strong sense of what is right. McAvoy thrillingly suggests a man on the rack of his own guilty mind who learns that the only way to secure his position and silence his conscience is to become inured to atrocity with further killings.

He also does full justice to the haunting poetry of the last act in which Macbeth realises just what he has lost – not least himself and any sense of purpose or meaning in life. It is the reason that Macbeth is a genuinely tragic character and not just a serial killer.

Among the supporting cast, Jamie Ballard movingly captures the terrible grief of Macduff when he learns that his wife and children have been killed, Hugh Ross brings a beautiful sense of moral decency into this dark play, doubling as Duncan and the doctor, while Forbes Masson proves a powerful Banquo, not least in his terrifying appearance at the Macbeths’ disastrous dinner party.

This is a gripping and genuinely startling production – and would be more effective still with a speedier running time.

Tickets 0844 871 7615; www.atgtickets.com/london

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GALLERY LINK:
- Events in 2013 > Opening night of ‘Macbeth’ held at the Trafalgar Studios – Departures, thanks to Nicole