RURAL communities in East Hampshire are being treated to a touring production from The Rude Mechanical Theatre Co.
Macbyrd is a comedy thriller, with sixteen of the characters birds, including Inspector Seed, a pigeon, as the detective.
It is set in 1940 and it is about the changes to a small village in rural Sussex, Jevington, brought about by the threat of invasion; how this impacts on the women’s institute, the cricket club, the village play and on relationships.
Up above, there is a power struggle among the birds, and the swan, a symbol of a certain kind of traditional Englishness and social structure, is murdered by the upstart raven, Macbyrd, who resents the swan’s snobbish disregard for the poor, the sparrows.
Writer and director Pete Talbot said: “There are, it has to be admitted, a few echoes of a certain Shakespeare play. Macbyrd is told by the ‘gypsy magpies’ that his time has come, that ‘sleek birds, black against the sky’ will rule. In fact, change to the village is because a momentous event is going to happen, and I’m not going to tell you what.”
The Rude Mechanicals are a contemporary commedia dell’arte company working in a carnivaesque tradition that goes back thousands of years.
See Macbyrd at Ropley Recreation Ground on Saturday, June 18; Hambledon Village Hall on Saturday, June 25; Selborne Primary School on Friday, July 8; and Sheet Recreation Ground on Sunday, July 17.
All performances are at 7.30pm. Picnics from 6pm.
Tickets are £15 plus concessions and are available by calling 01323 501260 or online at www.therudemechanicaltheatre.co.uk