Alan Cumming reveals ‘terrible stress’ of taking all roles in Macbeth

As the curtain rose last night on his new one-man show at the Tramway in Glasgow, the Hollywood star admitted: “I can imagine that you might think I was this demonic egomaniacal whore out wanting to play all the parts in Macbeth, but it just kind of happened.”

Instead the actor, who plays a patient in a mental institution who is inhabited by each of the characters from William Shakespeare’s play, while under the watchful eye of the medical staff, admitted that the boldness of the conceit left him feeling under intense pressure.

“It is terrifying. As a physical thing to do, it is very draining. I am bashed up, I find bruises everyday. My throat is sore and it is a hard thing to do physically as an actor, just carrying the whole project.

“Every day I come to work I see at least 20 images of myself looming from bus stops, so that is quite weird. That is actually worse. Early in rehearsals when I was finding my feet it was like Big Brother looming down saying: ‘you are going to play Macbeth’. It is a lot of pressure in all ways.”

The production is directed by John Tiffany and Andrew Goldberg for the National Theatre of Scotland and although well known as ‘“the Scottish play” in theatrical tradition, Cumming, who is set to transfer with the play to New York after its run in Glasgow, said he did not feel that it was particularly “Scottish”.

He said: “I don’t think there is, truly, a Scottish characteristic that is in Macbeth, it just happens to be set here.

“You could be anal and find little things, but it does not speak of the Scottish character to me – what it does speak of is certain things about universal human characteristics and what I think is amazing about it, and why we keep going back to it, is that at one moment an idea has come and another person realised it too and instead of thinking: ‘we couldn’t possibly’, they go for it.”