Coffee-Table Notes

Rufus Norris was sixteen when he first saw a production of Macbeth. That was a production by a company called Cherub Theatre, who toured it to Kidderminster College of Further Education, where Norris studied prior to going to RADA. It’s taken the artistic director of the National Theatre since 2015 a few decades to get round to doing his own production, which was first seen in the Olivier auditorium earlier this year. As a remounted version goes out on an extensive UK tour, the effect seeing Shakespeare’s bloodiest and darkest play had on Norris’ teenage self is something that has clearly stayed with him enough for him to want to captivate audiences of all ages in a similar fashion.     “When I first saw Macbeth it really grabbed me,” says Norris, “and I want to try and grab the thousands of students who are studying the play, and who rather than just read the text can see it for themselves. As arts subjects are being bled out of the education system, I think it’s important as wel

Morna Young is a long way from Moray as her new play prepares to take flight this week in the grounds of Brodie Castle, near Forres, as part of the third Findhorn Bay Festival. As an actor, Young is currently onstage every night at Glasgow Pavilion, where she is appearing in The Celtic Story. In Brodie Castle, meanwhile, her version of The Buke of the Howlat, an epic fifteenth century poem written in Scots by Richard Holland, tells the story of a young owl who believes himself to be ugly, blaming Mother Nature for his perceived lot. With such body image issues hindering the owl’s daily life, the all-powerful birds of the forest gather to hear his plea. Somewhere in the midst of this is a potted history of the entire Douglas clan in a promenade production told in Young’s version of Holland’s yarn by four song-birds who gather at dusk with a choir and a community cast overseen by director Ben Harrison. “It’s an intriguing and mysterious text,” says Young, still domiciled in Glas

Stephen Jeffreys – Playwright, teacher. Born April 22 1950; died September 17 2018 Stephen Jeffreys, who has died of a brain tumour aged 68, was a playwright who reimagined history across several centuries in daring ways that illustrated contemporary concerns. This worked most strikingly in his best known play, The Libertine, but was also the case with his recently revived adaptation of Charles Dickens’ Hard Times (1982), a reworking of Richard Brome’s 17 th century comedy, A Jovial Crew (1992) for the Royal Shakespeare Company, and, for Sydney Theatre Company, The Convict’s Opera (2008), an update of John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera featuring contemporary pop hits. There were pop songs there too in Jeffreys’ stage version of Backbeat (2011). An early adaptation of Iain Softley’s film about the early days of The Beatles with only Softley’s name attached had been seen at the Citizens Theatre, Glasgow, before being reworked by Jeffreys for the West End.   Jeffreys was also