Much Alex. So Branagh. Very Mud.

ASK SUBMIT This blog is for anyone who is interested in, planning on, selling their soul to go see Alex Kingston and Kenneth Branagh in Macbeth, June 2014 in New York at the Park Armory. Here we can offer suggestions on places to stay, airfare, things to do in NY, coordinate meet-ups, and basically just freak out about Alex Kingston as Lady M. It is mostly comprised of Alex fangirls, but any and all attending the show, planning on attending, wishing they could attend, or already attended are totes welcome. * → cast and crew → park armory run - details → mif run - details → play/author info

[hellogumdrop]

They fancy the pants off each other!

Sir Kenneth Branagh on the Macbeths (via hellogumdrop)

[sharksandteapots]

- Macbeth was staged in a deconsecrated Romanesque church as part of the Manchester International Festival. The Park Avenue Armory is 55,000 square feet - a slightly bigger performance venue. AK: It’s interesting because it feels like less of a piece of theatre or theatrical performance in a way. There are associations with doing a play, which are being in a theatre. And this [is] sort of arena… I’m still kind of finding my way in terms of how to compensate and deal with that, actually. Certainly the original performance, even though we were in a church, it was an incredibly intimate space. We had a very limited audience capacity, so it definitely was a completely different production in that respect. So our job is to, within our performance space, still try and retain that intimacy and retain that very immediate connection that the audience had with the play and with the characters.

Alex Kingston, talking to Carey Purcell during tech rehearsals for the Scottish play in NYC. "Time-travelling with Lady Macbeth", Playbill, 12th June 2014.

[sharksandteapots]

Beautiful :)

Image and tweet by Christine Williamson (@Moonsinger13 on Twitter). 22nd June 2014.

Success! #Macbeth @ParkAveArmory Amazing show. Brilliant use of the space. Thnx wonderful cast for signing my Folio 

[canyousonicme]

Alex Kingston as Lady Macbeth - Park Avenue Armory (June 2014) [x]

[canyousonicme]

Alex Kingston and Kenneth Branagh in Macbeth - Park Avenue Armory (June 2014) [x]

[canyousonicme]

Alex Kingston as Lady Macbeth - Park Avenue Armory (June 2014) [x]

[mamascullay]

I AM NOT PREPARED

[savvyliterate]

Alex Kingston lighting the candles for the opening of Macbeth. I am OK. I am really OK. (No, I’m not.)

[sharksandteapots]

Thankyou, Megs! :) ENJOY. xx

Also: this photo answers one of my questions about the show’s transfer to NYC. Lady M’s candle-lighting ritual is still part of the performance. (I saw Armory production photos and wondered if this time the candles were already lit before Lady M came onstage.)

[canyousonicme]

For me, seeing Branagh live on stage, playing one of the greatest Shakespearean roles there is, wielding a broadsword to a score composed by Patrick Doyle, just like he did inHenry V, was the chance of a lifetime. And no, I was not disappointed. When I arrived at the Armory, things were a bit chaotic. This was only the third performance of the show, and some of the ushers were giving me conflicting information, so it seems not all of the kinks had been worked out yet concerning how to get the audience inside. How difficult could that be? Well, this is not your ordinary theatrical experience.

Upon getting my ticket at the will-call booth, I was given a green-and-white wristband with my clan name on it. I was in clan Macduff, which is clearly the best clan ever. After all, nothing bad could ever happen to someone in Macduff’s family, right? As I left the box office area, a young woman dressed in vaguely medieval clothing greeted me as a member of her clan… [Read More]

[sharksandteapots]

Last summer, for two weeks, Mr. Branagh got back on the Shakespeare/Olivier track with a ferociously well-received Macbeth, which he co-directed with Rob Ashford, the Tony-winning choreographer, in a deconsecrated 19th-century church in the Ancoats mill district of Manchester. Thanks to Alex Poots, who, when he is not running the Manchester International Festival, is the artistic director of New York’s Park Avenue Armory, the two men are restaging their robust rendition at the Armory, from May 31 to June 22. "This is a play that’s been by my side since I was about 14," Mr. Branagh said. "I’ve seen it many, many times, and it took a long time to come around to the idea of how, and when, one might approach it. Last year, it came together. Our goal was to do the play as well as we could at the festival, but as we began to understand more and more about the play and our production, the chance to take it somewhere that was as dynamic for the play as the church we’d just played became very exciting."

Harry Haun. "In the footsteps of Laurence Olivier: ‘Macbeth’ finds Kenneth Branagh back on the master’s path", New York Observer, 3rd June 2014.

[canyousonicme]

[x]

[indubitably-insecure]

Even though I never got the chance to meet Alex, this was easily one of the best nights ever. What an amazing production!

[kerjenfanfic]

Meeting Alex Kingston and the Macbeth cast at the stage door.

Thanks again, StageElf! Check out all her theater information including stage door locations at http://www.stagescape.net/

[belle-juive]

What the fuck just happened

[surannestan]

It’s backwards, but OHMYGOD!!!!!!!!!! I got to talk to Alex! I asked her what her favorite part of the show is, but she said she didn’t know, so I asked her to find a part she really likes and sign next to it. If you can’t read it, it’s the “What thou wouldst highly, that wouldst thou holily” part. 

[1life2rock]

FOR ANYONE SEEING MACBETH: Okay so I went tonight and it was amazing!! So be excited :))) If you want to meet the cast here is what I would recommend: wait outside the main door, as in the door inside the Park Amory (the one you enter with your clan when the bell rings). Every single cast member came out that door tonight and then either went out the real front doors or the side doors. I also talked to a few people who work there and they all said (some more directly than others) that the door to the stage is where the cast comes out.  So basically just loiter in the lobby.

And I met Alex and she was super lovely! It pretty much was the greatest thing ever.

[flawlesslawlesstimequeen]

So I met Alex Kingston after her amazing performance in Macbeth. She is literally the personification of sunshine. Also, she called us “Kinglets.” She said it! I heard Alex Kingston say “Kinglets!” She knows we exist. My life is made.