The whisperings from abroad are far from foul: Shakespeare in the Ruins’ film adaptation of Macbeth was named the best feature at the Carmarthen Bay Film Festival in Wales.

Filmed in the fall of 2020, with contributions from more than 30 local stage actors, Macbeth was the first feature-length production in the local outdoor theatre company’s history. Co-directors Sarah Constible and Michelle Boulet, along with producer Lisa Nelson-Fries, accepted the honour at the annual festival in Llanelli, Wales, over the weekend.

Shot in black and white, the film stars Ray Strachan, Julie Lumsden, Cherissa Richards, Arne MacPherson, Debbie Patterson, Gabe Daniels, Tobias Hughes, Olaoluwa Fayokun, Andrea del Campo, Hera Nalam and Melissa Langdon.

The news of the victory comes with Shakespeare in the Ruins’ 2023 season less than two weeks away: on June 1, the company’s adaptation of the Bard’s Twelfth Night kicks off at the Trappist Monastery Provincial Heritage Park.

Directed by Christopher Brauer, the show will feature several actors — del Campo, Langdon and Nalam — who appeared in the film. Rounding out the cast are Tom Keenan, Darren Martens, Elio Zarrillo and Anaka Sandhu. With a score by Matt Peters and Matt Schellenberg (Royal Canoe, deadmen), Twelfth Night runs until July 1.

Jessica B. Hill, the star and writer of Pandora, the highlight of the 2022-2023 Prairie Theatre Exchange season, returns in July to star in The Dark Lady, a show she wrote about Emilia Bassano, a real-life poet and writer with whom Shakespeare allegedly had an affair. Bassano, who was multi-racial, was the first woman to publish her own poetry in the English language. That production will reunite Hill with Shakespeare in the Ruins artistic director Rodrigo Beilfuss, who also directed Pandora.

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As for the feature film, the company has submitted it to several other film festivals both in Canada and internationally.

ben.waldman@winnipegfreepress.com

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Ben Waldman
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Ben Waldman covers a little bit of everything for the Free Press.

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