Macbeth reimaged as the story of a 13-year-old TV star named Mackenzie with a ruthless stage mother? It may sound mad – and it is a bit bonkers – but it works a treat in Yve Blake’s smart, deliciously funny new play Mackenzie.

Kimberley Hodgson in Bell Shakespeare’s Mackenzie. Photo © Brett Boardman

In 2022, in a bid to attract a new, younger audience, Bell Shakespeare presented the world premiere of Laura Murphy’s musical The Lovers – a 21st-century look at romance through the eyes of the four young lovers in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Now, in a similar vein, the company is staging the world premiere of Mackenzie, a play with songs, which it describes as “a camp, dark and deranged retelling of Macbeth”.

Blake wrote the hit musical FANGIRLS, which explored teenage girls’ obsession with boy bands. Like FANGIRLS, Mackenzie is pitched at a young adult audience, but there is plenty in it to appeal to a far wider age group.

The glitter-soaked pop-culture satire is set in a TV studio in the early 2000s, home to a top-rating children’s show starring 13-year-old nepo baby Dahlia. Mackenzie...