Edinburgh Fringe Chats (#28): Laura Irish, MACBETH

27 Jun

Conducted by Emmie for Theatre and Tonic

As anticipation builds for the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2025, we’re catching up with a range of exciting creatives preparing to bring their work to the world’s largest arts festival this August. In this series, we delve into the stories behind the shows, the inspiration driving the artists, and what audiences can expect.

Today we’re joined by Laura Irish to chat about Macbeth.

1. Can you begin by telling us about your show and what inspired it?

Our version of Macbeth is full of surprises, music, magic and heart. Our work is to take Shakespeare and keep its essence intact while making it accessible, alive and exciting. We started the company during the pandemic (2021) taking live music and theatre to people’s backyards and we’ve expanded from there. Macbeth is our 4th Shakespeare paired with music and we’ve just finished a 97 show tour of New Zealand and Australia. The gender-blind casting happened sort of as an accident but has opened up an empathy and new understanding for the characters for audiences with some people saying they'd never felt empathy for Macbeth until seeing our version.

All of our would-be Kings are Queens in The Barden Party’s version. We pair the show with bluegrass/Americana music such as Dolly Parton, Mumford & Sons, Noah Kahan and more and the themes of the soul, revenge, betrayal, hell, etc, fit so seamlessly into the show. Our version of Macbeth explores more lightness and comedy than other versions and plays with the elements of lightness and darkness within each person and within the story, which we find makes the dark moments hit even harder as a sort of whiplash. One moment you’re laughing or delighted by our witches (I won’t spoil anything) and the next you get punched right in the gut. We have looked at Macbeth through the lens of the relationships and found ways to explore those even deeper and have couched all our characterisations through the themes of love, loyalty and legacy and what those motivators mean for the play as it was written and in a modern context of leadership, love and friendship.

2. What made you want to bring this work to the Fringe this year?

We’re veterans of other Fringe’s, particularly The Adelaide Fringe in Australia (the 2nd largest arts festival in the world) where we won Best Theatre for Macbeth for the 2nd week of the Adelaide Fringe this year. We thought it would be a bold move to take our version of the Scottish Play all the way from New Zealand to Scotland to the world’s largest arts festival and see how we fare there. This is our first Edinburgh Fringe and we’re very excited.

3. How would you describe your show in three words?

Mischievous, Bold, Alive

4. What do you hope audiences take away from watching your performance?

I hope they come away feeling invigorated, energised and connected with us. The takeaway from our version is to hold your people close and that everyone holds a universe inside of them of good and bad, we can either work to bring out the good in ourselves and others or we can bring out the bad and the consequences of that.

5. What’s your top tip for surviving the Fringe?

Pace yourself, plan the things that are unmissable, and still leave room to be spontaneous. Trust how you’re feeling in the moment. Want to see a show but haven’t booked anything? Don’t overthink, just jump into something. You never know what treasure you’ll find at fringe. Also, be prepared to see shows varying in quality and preparation. That’s part of the fun. You might see a show that’s just a run of 97 shows like ours or you might see something experimental that everyone is trying for the first time and might not work. Both are valid explorations of art, so meet shows and artists where they are and just enjoy every minute.

6. Where and when can people see your show?

1-22 August - ZOO Southside, Studio, 10:40am, 90 minutes.