IN PRODUCTION: DEATH AND THE CARPENTER
Written by Sonia Overall
Performed Sept/Oct 2023
Do you believe in fate?
A young man stumbles upon Death in the woods, practicing his fiddle. This hapless carpenter has heard the first part of an improvised tune played by Death on his fiddle made of bone. Now he is trapped in limbo: he has seen Death but cannot die until the tune ends. Luckily for him, the interruption has put Death off his stride.
The pair strike a bargain. If Death can finish the tune by sunset, he will claim the carpenter’s life for himself. If Death fails, the man will go free. Playing for time, the carpenter draws Death into talking about his music and the unlikely love story behind his fiddle.
The show will take place over a number of dates and locations in September and October of 2023.
Following a successful Edinburgh run of Talk (2019) and a sold out run of Macbeth in The Westgate Towers Canterbury (2022), Parrot Theatre Company presents Death and the Carpenter, a darkly funny story that explores the universal themes of love, death, and fate. Adapted from a short story of the same name by acclaimed writer Sonia Overall, Death and the Carpenter reimagines death and mortality through the folk music of Greg Ireland and the puppetry of James Frost.
In a small clearing in a deserted woods, Death and the Carpenter gets to grips with the fleeting nature of time and the reality of losing the ones you love. Through simple story telling, this folktale immerses the audience into a world where death and beauty exist side by side and where death has a voice, a voice that rings loud and clear.
Death and the Carpenter (2023) trailer
MACBETH
Written by William Shakespeare
Performed at the Westgate Towers, Canterbury, 3rd - 5th November 2022
"O, full of scorpions is my mind, dear wife"
Macbeth, a hardened soldier, discovers there are no limits to his ambition when he encounters three witches who inform him that he could be king. Believing he is destined for power, he embarks on a tyrannical path that leads to his downfall.
In this innovative new production, we reimagine Macbeth's ascent as the horrors of PTSD and the allure of the supernatural begin to take a hold of his reality. As he takes his country to the brink, the world begins to unravel around him.
Macbeth (2022) trailer
TALK
Written by Mark Wilson
Performed at C-Cubed, Edinburgh Fringe Festival, 11 - 17 August 2019
“Hell must be a heart filled with unheard stories…”
Bethlem Royal Hospital, the Criminal Wing for the Insane. 1854. Two Doctors, Charles Hood and George Haydon, are angered by the cruel, inhumane treatment of patients. They struggle to reform old fashioned attitudes with more a progressive outlook.
Care rather than restraint. Talking rather than punishment. Their relationship becomes increasingly strained as Haydon adopts a more radical approach, now known as psychotherapy. Two patients, Richard and Emily, are caught in the middle as they attempt to demonstrate their innovative theories and battle with the repressive authorities.
Talk (2019) trailer
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Emily, a bright and brilliant poet has been wrongly incarcerated by her domineering husband. Richard, a talented artist suffers from psychosis and wrestles with a history that haunts him. Both have been banished from the world. We watch their struggle to find a voice amidst the roar and clamour of madness, both from outside and within. Will Talking ease their troubled minds or crack them completely?
In a time blighted by NHS cuts to mental health care, Talk is at once a scathing rebuke of treatment of the mentally ill in the past, and a moving and thought-provoking story about how we inter-relate and connect with one another in the present.