Coffee-Table Notes

Festival Theatre, Edinburgh Four stars Love is a battlefield in Rufus Norris’ National Theatre production of Shakespeare’s Scottish play, first seen on the South Bank in 2017 and revived in this recast touring version. This follows a mild critical wounding that caused some to suggest the show shouldn’t be let off the leash at all. Going by the strength and scale of the apocalyptic-looking fall-out that ensues in the production’s un-named war-zone, such attacks are barely justified, even if some of the stylistic excesses try a tad too hard. The c obbled catwalk on Rae Smith’s deadly-black set that cuts through the centre of the stage and bridges the physical borders between nations is a clear enough reference, even if the Witches cavort like a goth pole-dancing troupe. Led by Michael Nardone as Macbeth, the khaki-soiled gang behave like squaddies on a stag-do, hanging up chopped-off heads as trophies. Perhaps they could feature in Macbeth’s castle, which resembles a bombed-ou

Michael Nardone and Kirsty Besterman were given the keys to the kingdom when they were cast as Lord and Lady Macbeth in Rufus Norris’ National Theatre production of Shakespeare’s Scottish play. Picking up the mantles of Rory Kinnear and Anne-Marie Duff, who played the murderously ambitious couple for the London run of Norris’ apocalyptic-looking production proved irresistible to both actors, who came to it with strong track records of doing classic plays onstage. In what sounds like a radical reinvention of Shakespeare’s play, the production’s dark mix of the personal and the political nevertheless cast a spell on them in a way where the flesh and blood everyday passions of the couple are brought home.   “I wanted to try and give Macbeth a real edge as an honest kind of man,” says Fife-born Nardone, who will be appearing on a Scottish stage for the first time in several years. “His relationship with the king is really important, and at the beginning of the play he knows his positi

Cicely Berry – Voice coach, theatre director Born, May 17 1926; died October 15 2018. Cicely Berry, who has died aged 92, revolutionised how actors use their voice onstage, aligning speech with a deep-rooted physicality that empowered it. This was particularly the case with tackling Shakespeare, whose poetry under Berry’s guidance came alive with a richness that focused on understanding the text from the gut as well as the mind. Berry brought her integrated body-and-mind way of coaching for voice to the Royal Shakespeare Company, where for twelve years she was the sole member of a voice department created under then artistic director Trevor Nunn, who had drafted her into the company. During that time, she worked with Peter Brook on his 1970 production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and struck up working friendships with noticeably visceral living writers such as David Rudkin, who she called her mentor, and Edward Bond. Like them, she recognised how words come to life when l