Cush Jumbo: Audience Behaviour Has “Got Weirder as Time Has Gone On”

Actor Cush Jumbo has said that audience behaviour generally has “got weirder as time has gone on”.

Speaking to The Times, Jumbo was responding to the recent revelation from Andrew Scott that when he was mid “To be, or not to be” as Hamlet at the Almeida Theatre several years ago, someone got out their laptop and started emailing. He stopped speaking until the laptop was shut.

“You’re in the middle of something that requires enormous focus,” Jumbo says. “It requires your brain to basically not Instagram scroll for two hours … so something like a laptop!”

In the current Macbeth production, starring David Tennant and Jumbo as his wife, the audience listen to the action through headphones, creating an immersive experience.

Jumbo says that the headphones mean that the audience is unaware of how loud they sound to the actors on stage. “The Donmar is tiny and they are thinking, ‘Well, no one else can hear me, they’ve got their headphones on.’ They can’t hear themselves rustling a sweet packet but we can. And they fart.”

The London-born actress revealed she had previously turned down an opportunity to play the power-hungry queen, “You work out over time that there are some roles you can endanger yourself doing with the wrong people.”

She signed up to star in the role alongside Tennant: “You have to be so supportive of each other to play these roles where you ultimately are displaying some damage. And David is literally one of my favourite people on the planet to work with.” He’s the “perfect leading man”, she continues, because he has “little to no ego”.

Jumbo also revealed that she only reads reviews once the show has finished. “You can be feeling like everything went well, but one sentence can destroy your performance and your self-esteem to the point where it ruins the rest of the run.” 

Macbeth is at The Donmar Warehouse until 10 February

Photo Credit: Marc Brenner