An English Literature Lesson for 250,000 students including those at Bromsgrove

28 May 2018

One hundred Year 10 English Literature GCSE students from Bromsgrove School virtually joined
250,000 students from around the UK in an English lesson with a difference on Thursday 26th April.
They had the opportunity to watch a live presentation of the RSC’s Macbeth in Bromsgrove’s recently
opened Routh Concert Hall. Presented by Ayo Akinwolere, the screening included interviews with
Directors, Actors and RSC staff.

The production, starring Christopher Ecclestone in the title role and Niamh Cusack as his ill-fated wife
received mixed, but generally positive, reviews from the ultra-critical Year 10s who went into the
auditorium with their own very fixed views of how the play should look and how the Actors should
perform their roles.

Polly Findlay’s direction immediately upset these expections by giving the play a modern setting and
doing away with the stereotypical old hags for witches (these were played by equally creepy young girls)
and turning the usually testosterone-fuelled Macduff into a benign and heavily political civil servant to
emphasise the gap in ideology between himself and Macbeth. Lady Macbeth’s descent into madness
remained as expected and Donalbain, Duncan’s second son was a girl.

Throughout the production, above the stage, a clock was counting down. Counting down to the
inevitable end of the eponymous Macbeth, while other deaths were captured by the Porter who, as the
pupils noticed, remained on-stage, chalking off each death on the wall and acting as a sort of bridge
between the gruesome action of the play and the audience. We might question why he did not
intervene in all of the murders, but then he could ask the same of us.

Presenting the play in three chunks was effective in retaining the attention of the target audience and
it worked. All of the students were gripped throughout and benefitted from the insight provided by the
cast and crew.

Schools were also invited to get involved by sending questions about the production and pictures of
their cohort engrossed in the action and Bromsgrove’s new Routh Hall in all its finery, was beamed
across the country.

Whilst the production might not have been quite how our students had imagined the play when they
read and acted it out in class, what it achieved was an appreciation of how Shakespeare’s words and
ideas do not belong in the distant past but are flexible and as relevant now, as they always were.