Mr and Mrs Macbeth of Moonshine Valley Road
28/06/2025 - 20/07/2025
Production Details
Written by Gregory Cooper.
The Professional Theatre Company.
Collisions, conflict, calamity – and comedy!
Jo and Tom Macbeth, Shakespearean acting pros, are just 30 minutes from opening night when disaster strikes in the dressing room! What follows is a wild mix of comedy, drama, and explosive conflict, revealing the ups and downs of life on and off the stage.
And remember – it’s not Shakespeare!
Starring Mark Hadlow and Lara MacGregor.
VENUE
Centrepoint Theatre
280 Church Street, Palmerston North
PERFORMANCES
Wednesday • 6.30PM
Thursday • 7.30PM
Friday • 7.30PM
Saturday • 7.30PM
Sunday • 4PM
Opening Night • Saturday 28 June
Closing Night • Sunday 20 July
Approx run time: TBC
https://www.centrepoint.co.nz/mrandmrsmacbeth
https://nz.patronbase.com/_CentrePoint/Productions/MRMS/Performances
Starring Mark Hadlow and Lara MacGregor.
Mark McEntyre - set design
Bob Bickerton - sound design
Sean Hawkins - lighting design
Theatre ,
TBC
Dial ‘M’ for magnificent mumming, mirth, marital mayhem and the Scottish Play
Review by Richard Mays 30th Jun 2025
’Twas a dark and stormy night, and the witches sat ’round the cauldron and said, “Greg’ry, spin us a yarn.” And this is the weaving he wove…
The result is a show that takes place behind the scenes of a Shakespearean stage production. If the Bard’s Scottish Play was to be ‘star-cross’d’ say with Michael Frayn’s Noises Off, and with the odd additional Ugly Shakespeare Company type skit spliced in, it’s possible the resulting child from such a union would resemble this.
For 30 years, Tom and Jo Macbeth have been partners in life, partners on stage and now with their Moonshine Valley Theatre Company venture, partners in business. Set in their shared dressing room on opening night of the company’s inaugural Macbeth season with a famous international film director in the audience, this is their warts ’n’ all, ‘double, double toil and trouble’ backstage reveal.
While Jo is playing Lady Macb-ee, Tom, once a ‘name’ performer, has been relegated from the leading role to understudy in favour of a younger brasher ‘it’ guy who has a six-figure social media profile. Tom is not taking his demotion well and is hitting the bottle. The first act is built around the couple’s incessant sniping, bitchiness and bickering. As a profile of a disintegrating marriage, theirs – if not already on the rocks – is certainly headed that way.
Magnificently invested in these characters, Mark Hadlow as Tom and Lara Macgregor (who was raised in Palmerston North) as Jo, juggle the full gamut of relationship wrangles thrown at them by Gregory Cooper’s inventive and witty script. While the pair bring plenty of physicality, intensity and spark to a situation where life is seemingly imitating art, there’s also room for sight gags, slapstick and clowning. While some of this is clearly contrived as part of an ongoing ‘Tom and Jo show’ where the couple’s ‘reality’ merges with their stage performances, the farce and its payoffs are there for easily appreciated reasons.
Opening on Mark McEntyre’s stylistic metal-framed, LED highlighted set to a foreboding cinematic overture containing the odd clap of thunder, there are enough entertainingly lighter moments to offset the sense of unease that Bob Bickerton’s soundscape generates. The comedy masquerading as a tragedy (or is it the other way round?) experience is further compounded by Sean Hawkins’ atmospheric lighting design that includes the odd dazzling silhouette effect. In some scenes a deliberate patchiness is evident – forcing the actors to actively seek out the light.
The interplay of performance, light and sound is a satisfying element as the engaging over-the-top backstage love story unfolds. While it’s not necessary to know Shakespeare’s Macbeth to enjoy this tribute piece, some familiarity with the Scottish Play would increase appreciation for the careful work Cooper, Hadlow, Macgregor and their production team have put into its crafting. It also validates inclusion for the several choice quotations and scenes lifted from Shakespeare’s play.
Depending on regional location, the production has previously been performed under several title variations.* For this iteration, it takes its alliterative alias from Moonshine Valley Rd, which branches off SH57 in Palmy North’s Tararua foothills suburb of Aokautere. Legend has it that there in days gone by, as the moon rose over the ranges and its beams illuminated the landscape, illicit stills would be busily brewing batches of unlicensed hooch.
It’s a theatre company backstory the whiskey-swigging Tom could no doubt appreciate as justification for his frequent backstage tipples. I hate to imagine the state of his liver though when the Centrepoint season ends on July 20. Hopefully, there’ll be enough well-earned full houses to mitigate that level of risk to his health.
Meanwhile dial ‘M’ for magnificent mumming, mirth, marital mayhem and the Scottish Play.
*[In Nelson it was Mr & Mrs Macbeth of Dodson Valley Road; in Christchurch it was Mr & Mrs Macbeth of Heathcote Valley Road – ed.]
Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer




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