Out, damned shot! Macbeth becomes a cutthroat netball musical at Edinburgh fringe

9 hours ago 4

A spate of Macbeths will hit the Edinburgh festival this month, all of which bring a novel spin on Shakespeare’s Scottish play. There’s Macbeth: The Musical, accompanied by pop classics, and Macbeth for Bairns, a sensory children’s version with bubbles. But the most leftfield must be an award-winning show that has taken the Australian fringe circuit by storm.

As mashups go, Lady Macbeth Played Wing Defence is nothing if not high-wire. It’s a black comedy musical, which takes place on a netball court and features a seven-strong team of teen players, one of whom, Mac Beth, is a latter-day Lady M with vaulting ambitions of becoming Year 12 netball champion. The witches are a girl band called the Dagger Divas who goad her towards her goal, by any means necessary.

Created and performed by an all-female creative team, Crash Theatre Co’s production debuted at Perth fringe festival in 2024 and arrives in Scotland as part of the House of Oz season. It has been compared to both Six the Musical, which started out at the Edinburgh fringe, and the Australian musical Fangirls, which had its London premiere last year. Its writer, Courtney McManus, who is also co-lyricist and performs the role of the team’s coach, works as an English teacher at an Australian school. She had noticed a lack of interest in Shakespeare among students and set out to encourage teenagers to connect with the tragedy.

‘How do I make Shakespeare accessible?’ … Lady Macbeth Played Wing Defence.

“In the English departments I’ve worked in, these texts are the ones on the shelves that have dust on them … If I said to my students ‘Who’s Shakespeare?’ they probably wouldn’t be able to tell you because it’s just not that relevant to them. That was key in my thinking: ‘how do I make Shakespeare accessible and relevant?’”

Macbeth has always been her favourite Shakespeare play but her family has more of a passion for sport. “So for me it was about ‘how can I get people invested in Shakespeare?’” As soon as she had the idea to set it in the world of netball, she knew it had to be a musical, with bass, synths and athleticism combined. Bec Price composed its electro-pop score and co-wrote the lyrics (she directs the show, too) with influences from Lady Gaga, Kylie Minogue and Charli xcx – but with added sporting elements. Price sampled the sound of netball trainers on a court for one of the show’s main songs, Pick Your Player.

“Synths are my favourite instruments in the whole world because they’re so layered,” says Price. “So when the girls came to me to write the music I thought ‘I’m going to make it a dance album’ and that’s exactly what they wanted … The vibe was that we wanted to make Shakespeare really cool and in the club … flashing lights and fast music with girls spinning around.”

The play’s themes transposed perfectly to the adrenaline-fuelled world of competitive netball, thinks McManus, and served as a way to explore young female ambition, rivalry and teamwork. “The way the characters have been written by me mirror my experiences with young people when they’re having their worst moments and when they’re having their best, too.” Importantly, Mac Beth is given a redemption arc, explains McManus: “Mac Beth still feels the guilt, she still suffers the consequences of her actions, but she has a road to redemption.”

The core message of the show revolves around the collective power of the team and the girls, rather than the individual power that Mac Beth craves. “We can take that message into the groups of women that surround us: we don’t need to be the biggest and the best. We just need to be supportive and supported.”

Price has worked as a youth mentor, running camps for young girls’ mental health. “I was really passionate about the word ‘bossy’ which is never used to describe a man. So what is being bossy? What is being ambitious? Let’s put it on a stage and have everything go wrong but still at the end this girl deserves love, and to be part of the team.”