Thurso actress set for Lady Macbeth role
A CAITHNESS actress is set to take on one of the most demanding female roles in the history of theatre.
Thurso’s Helen Mackay is to star as Lady Macbeth in a new production playing at venues across the North this summer.
She will appear opposite James Mackenzie, better known as Raven on the CBBC television programme of the same name, who will be playing the titular character, one of Shakespeare’s most famous anti-heroes, Macbeth.
Helen said it is “very exciting” to be playing as important a role as Lady Macbeth.
“It is one of the great roles for women and I am really looking forward to playing it. It’s been especially great working with James as Macbeth,” she said.
“We have a real chemistry between us and I hope the audience will really see the closeness between these two characters. It’s so easy to see them as monsters but we want people to understand what drives them as human beings.”
Lady Macbeth is just the latest big role for Helen in her increasingly successful career in theatre.
Having started out with Thurso Players, she has since graduated from the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama and appeared in The Silver Darlings, Sunset Song and starred as Gerda in The Snow Queen at the Royal Lyceum Theatre in Edinburgh.
*For more on this story see Friday’s John O’Groat Journal.