Welcome to the reality television show that’s about to sweep the nation, in which a live audience decide the public’s favourite Shakespeare tragedy: yes, it’s Will of the People.

As three well-known actors pitch their own preference – Macbeth, Hamlet or King Lear – their competing egos and a put-upon studio manager threaten to derail proceedings for the unfortunate host, struggling desperately to hold the whole project together. Tragedy? You bet…

Faced with a looming broadcast deadline and a public vote that results in a three-way tie, the host takes a drastic decision: to combine the plays into one. But can the actors finally find a way to work together towards a denouement that puts all previous Shakespeare productions in the shade with its body count – including co-opted audience members – bravado and sheer bloody awfulness?

MacHamLear is a shameless exploitation of the brilliance of England’s greatest writer in a new show that aims to tickle audiences in places they’ve never been tickled before. And hopefully get away with it.

'A riotous evening of farcical fun'
– Manchester Wire

On December 19, 1916, the body of Grigory Efimovich Rasputin was dragged from the frozen Malaya Nevka river in St Petersburg. His bound hands were clenched in fists of fury, as if he had been scraping at the ice from below, despite having already been beaten, shot and hounded into the freezing grave of the St Petersburg waterways.

But what if the body was not Rasputin’s? What if it was, instead, one of the doubles he had used in life to protect himself, planted by the secret police to create the myth of Rasputin’s murder and, ultimately, bring about the collapse of the Romanov empire with which he was inextricably bound?

What if Grigory Efimovich – Grishka – lived on as a prisoner inside the walls of the St Peter and St Paul Fortress, destined to watch the rise of the Communists and the assassination of his beloved Alix while replaying in his mind the glory years at the start of a century of violence and terror that he himself had unwittingly helped to shape?

In 1936, a keen young researcher is personally detailed by Stalin to document Rasputin’s first-hand account of the fall of the Romanovs. Given unprecedented access to the fascinating prisoner, the student learns the truth about Grishka and the women in his life – but also discovers that the truth can be a dangerous commodity.

‘Bristling with theatrical ideas’ – Sir Alan Ayckbourn

‘Really powerful and visual’ – Life on Mars co-creator Matthew Graham

‘Intriguing and edifying’, ‘alive and full of energy’ – actor Paul Copley

Reality TV show host Jefferson King has it all – a primetime slot, A-list celebrity guests and a personal life to die for. His success blinds him to the warm-up man who’s bitter from years of casual abuse and the bored wife who’s just about ready for some action in the luxurious tedium of her existence.

So when hotshot new producer Roxanne Lennox tries to shake things up, blurring the lines between reality and illusion, the whole superficial charade threatens to come tumbling down.

All of which prompts the uncomfortable question: just how much of Jefferson King’s life is real anyway?

Set in the Wessex so beloved by Thomas Hardy, this adaptation of his classic novel Tess of the d’Urbervilles tells the devastating story of Tess Durbeyfield, daughter of a poor villager who fatefully discovers they may be related to the aristocratic d’Urberville family.

As Tess is sent to seek respectability with her new-found relatives, she embarks on a dramatic journey that will lead to love, loss and ultimate tragedy. Struggling with the social mores of the rural Victorian world she inhabits, and the hypocrisy that plagues her sex, she forges a desperate path to pursue her own destiny.

'Very well-crafted and professional'
Tim Rice,
Broadway and West End lyricist

'Very powerful... exquisitely presented'
Warner Brown,
Broadway and West End lyricist

★ ★ ★ ★ ★
'Truly stirring and sensational'
LondonTheatre1

Blackpool’s North Pier is a magnet. It draws locals, regular tourists and first-time visitors alike. And seagulls.

So it’s no surprise to find three disparate people from very different backgrounds contemplating their lives on the pier one sunny afternoon. It is a bit weirder to find a seagull as their therapist.

As a Southerner, a Northerner and a Sandgrown’un trade ideas, experiences and the occasional bit of Aristotelian narrative theory, their colliding views are brought into sharp focus by the seagull, who brings a literal bird’s eye perspective to their entrenched opinions.

But can a surreal, absurdist intervention really change the power dynamics in a world that’s already difficult to navigate? Is it possible to learn empathy from a bird? And will the seagull survive the whole performance without pooping?

'A stellar ensemble piece'
'Very thought-provoking'
- Audience feedback