“Macbeth“, with Paul Scofield - 1966 - BBC Radio

This production of “The Scottish Play” starring Paul Scofield in the lead role, was first broadcast on the Third Programme in April 1966 and was subsequently repeated on Radio 4 when the network was launched in 1967. It is one of the few dramas from that period which has been retained by the BBC archive, and it was aired again on 10th May 2008 as part of the BBC7 tribute to Paul Scofield who died in March 2008 at the age of 83. One episode of approximately two hours and 15 minutes. ___________________________ Paul Scofield: Macbeth Peggy Ashcroft: Lady Macbeth David Westen: Malcolm John Westbrook: Banquo Allan McClelland: Lord Brian Hewlett: Donalbain Cecile Chevraeau: Gentlewoman Fraser Kerr: Angus Glyn Dearman: Young Siward/Glyn Dearman Fleance Grizelda Hervey: 1st Witch Henry Stamper: Seyton/Old Man Jane Wenham: Lady Macduff John Dearth: Captain John Hollis: Siward, Earl of Northumberland/1st Murderer John Humphry: Lennox John Justin: Ross Mary O’Farrell: 2nd Witch Nicholas Charles: Macduff’s son Noel Howlett: Doctor of Physic Preston Lockwood: Caithness Stephen Thorne: 2nd Murderer/Menteith Sylvia Coleridge: 3rd Witch Timothy West: Porter Walter Fitzgerald: King Duncan Music: John Buckland Dir: John Tydeman “Paul Scofield kept the listener with him for every inch of the . Scofield’s performance was ... quivering with sensibility and never far from hysteria, working from one appalling action to the next with the perverted energy of a man cutting across the grain of his nature. Mr. Scofield’s mastery of verse is unsurpassed by anyone except Gielgud in the modern theatre, and here his exhausted pauses and savagely renewed attack on the lines turned the language itself into a physical symbol of the moral laws whose weight he was heaving aside“. “Getting Across the Inwardness of Macbeth“, The Times of London, 30 April 1966.