RIFT: Macbeth: The Balfron Tower

until 16/08

By entering RIFT’s remarkable, immersive interpretation of Macbeth you have to be prepared to spend a night having left behind your phone, possessions, any contact with the outside world and your individualism. If you cling to these, like the characters, you will be left blind to all that is happening around you. Brutalism and gore, London and theatre at their best. For this night, you belong to the Tower.

Wonderful acting, playful improvisations complimenting the fully respected original, the set is reality and reality is the set, executed and choreographed exceptionally.

Thank you to RIFT and the Balfron Tower residents for their patience with the outsider, noisy, excited us.

Sleep no more, indeed; as, if you are lucky enough to be in a lovely group like I was, there will be no sleep. The apartment is now the set for you, stories and lives shared for this one night, how easily we now know each other for years, how obviously there cannot be any sleep when surrounded by these views, sets of their own accord.

Woken up tired, confused, hungover or still drunk, on a top bunk bed by the sweet hot light of a Summer Sunday I feel bliss. The dirt on the windows only helps to make the edge of the world blurred and even more dreamy. Breakfast with the new friends, goodbye, the Tower has been so kind.

You used to scare me, now I adore you. I wish these views and corridors and rifts and utopias of yours, even if sometimes soured, stay with you and your patient residents. Not sold shamelessly and shamefully to the affluent classes. I hope and will try to ensure that this summer hot light is reserved for you all, not for spreadsheets and flat whites.

You gave me shelter and a night to keep in memory forever, safe. How can you thank a building but in dreams?

Dreams that money can buy.

More info:

http://macbeth.in/
http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/balfron-tower-art-fetishising-estates-157
http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2014/jul/06/macbeth-review-rift-balfron-tower-london
novaramedia.com/2013/08/social-cleansing-in-tower-hamlets-interview-with-balfron-tower-evictee/