What if Macbeth were a 13-year-old pop star? Audiences are about to find out

1 week ago 4

Playwright Yve Blake dived into teen girls’ obsessions with boy bands for her smash-hit musical FANGIRLS, which has now been picked up as a series for a major streaming channel.

For her next project, Blake is returning to the subject of fame and obsession to dust one of Shakespeare’s darkest works, Macbeth, a Nickelodeon fairy floss pink.

Mackenzie’s creator, Yve Blake (left), and director Virginia Gay.

What if Macbeth were a 13-year-old child star trying to make it big, Blake ponders, and Lady Macbeth her pushy stage mum? Throw in a séance and a geriatric make-up artist with a vision and, snap, crackle and pop, Blake transports Macbeth to a television studio in 2006.

For Bell Shakespeare’s artistic director, Peter Evans, commissioning Blake’s Mackenzie alongside Shakespeare’s great political play Julius Caesar to headline the company’s 2026 season was a no-brainer.

The two plays bookend history and demonstrate the company’s mission to stick closely to Shakespeare’s timeless canon and then occasionally shake it up, as a pop princess once sang, for a new generation. Next year’s season will end with a national tour of the company’s 2023 production of Macbeth.

“At its simplest, Mackenzie brings a new audience potentially, and there is, we think, a substantial crossover audience,” Evans says.

“It definitely allows us to work with a writer we believe in. We see ourselves as a company built around one particular writer, Shakespeare, but we care about text and words, so when we can work with an Australian writer we do. It feels totally natural and a win-win for us.”

The idea for Mackenzie came to Blake as she was coming off a huge emotional and professional high watching FANGIRLS’ London premiere in 2024.

“That’s when I decided I would write a play just for me, that didn’t have any consequence attached to it and doesn’t have people’s money invested in it, that would be fun actually,” she says.

“I thought, Macbeth is such a great story, and then I don’t have to figure out the end of the story, which is always the hardest part. I was 22 when FANGIRLS premiered, and I was now 26 and my age was often brought up in interviews, and so the reward of youth coalesced with this adaption.

“Macbeth wants to be king, and king is like the most undisputed best job in the world, right? You’re famous, you’re powerful, no one can stop you. And I think in 2025 there are no monarchs but there are plenty of celebrities I am obsessed with. And I thought how interesting to map this onto someone’s journey who wants to become the No.1 pop girl of the world.”

Coriolanus by Bell Shakespeare starring Hazem Shammas.

Evans says it’s best to think of Mackenzie as a new play that tracks the plot points of Shakespeare’s original.

“It works so completely on its own terms, dealing with a young person’s fame and what they are willing to do for ambition, and the ramifications of that and the guilt, and how it can unravel.”

Audiences are still not quite back to pre-COVID levels for Bell Shakespeare. After presenting Shakespeare’s lesser known play Coriolanus, set in the early days of the Roman Republic, the theatre company will open 2026 with Julius Caesar, set in the last years of the Roman Republic, a history play with remarkable resonance to Donald Trump’s America.

“The conspirators are arguing for the Republic when in fact the plebs and the electors want an autocrat or a king, and perhaps the conspirators are out of step with what the Roman people are,” Evans says. “That feels particularly interesting at this time when people seem to be open to voting against democracy.”

Blake organised a reading of Mackenzie at the Melbourne Comedy Festival in January. Main stage companies were curious, when Bell entered “the chat”. “That was the dream,” Blake says. So, quickly, this little project was suddenly off to the races.”

Directed by Adelaide Cabaret Festival artistic director Virginia Gay, Mackenzie will open in Sydney in June before touring to Melbourne.

“I hope it’s the funniest school excursion kids have ever been on, a night of silly chaos, but also an interesting study of pathological obsession with youth and fame,” Blake says.