King David

The Scottish play has its long and worthy track record, thanks to the Bard, but Romanian Eugene Ionesco's spin-off version he admits he finds a "funny and odd piece".

The Stratford-upon-Avon-based actor, 56, is constantly seen on TV and is an RSC star who lit up the Newcastle Theatre Royal stage with the title role in Richard III in the 1990s. On his Shakespeare wish-list there's still Falstaff, Prospero and "even King Lear one day although I want to do it younger. I think it's too old if you're 70-odd".

Of the challenge of switching between playing Duncan in Macbeth and the title role in Macbett he says: "It's tricky because in Macbett all the names are slightly different so one day I'm going to say Banco instead of Banquo. We have a Romanian director Silviu (Purcarete) who was coming from a different direction, because he's a European and we're British actors and work very differently. He sort of came 'outside in' and we were 'inside out' so we had to meet in the middle.

"He would give you an idea like eating sushi while doing a speech. And you're thinking 'I'm talking about war and eating sushi... that's good, but I don't know why I'm saying this speech, let alone why I'm eating sushi'. But that doesn't matter to him that doesn't matter, all he wants is you to start to think. It's a very different way of rehearsing."

He admits knowing nothing of Macbett prior to rehearsal and feels that the level of contemporary jokes in the play could have been more wide-ranging. David points to a film sequence ending the play which shows Banco's lineage producing terrible leaders "so Macbett is nothing to what Banco's descendants become. Instead of a teddy bear we should have George Bush and, at the end, Tony Blair," he says semi-seriously.

He jokes about selling some of his Macbett costumes on Ebay as "weight-reduction suits" because he's lost pounds on stage cavorting about.

David feels that contacting the audience is always important and has grabbed the chance in a scene where he sits among the audience. "If there's not space for me in the front row I get them to budge up so there's even more interaction," he says with a grin.

The actor is part of an acting dynasty. He's the son of legendary "Doctor Who Number Two" Patrick Troughton and David's son Sam has been busy filming the second series of Robin Hood in Romania. Youngest son William also acts. "I've lived in Stratford for 24 years and the RSC is the only work I do from home. It's nice because I was second show into The Swan Theatre and I'm second to last out of it. There's a nice symmetry to it," he says.

"I've heard stories of a woman in America who stormed out of Macbett saying 'this is an absolute travesty, I don't know why the RSC is doing Macbeth like this for'. Even The Independent in its listings changed the title to Macbeth because they obviously thought we'd made a spelling mistake. They should have called it Betty to avoid all this," he says of the way the play has been greeted.

He dubs the latest version of Macbeth "very visceral, bloody, sexy, violent, Celtic and dark and evil, going to the heart of what is in all of it." The actor started out with the RSC in Macbeth in 1982 and played the Porter in the RSC's 1987 version.

David reveals that his father died in America while he was on stage and he later put in a knock-knock joke (Who's there... Doctor... Doctor Who) into his performance as a tribute.

"It's a pathetic joke really. They were all saying 'you'd better have the night off' but he died in America so there was nothing I could do about it. He used to hate the theatre and used to call it 'all that shouting in the evening'. He was the first character to be rejuvenated live on television as Doctor Who, it had never been done before," he says proudly before adding that he would never have taken on the role himself, even if he had been asked.

"My credo is not how big the part is or what you're doing but who you are working with. Whether the thing that you're doing is what you set out to do and you're all having fun doing it. If you don't have fun then there's not much point in being an actor. Job satisfaction is primary because pay is crap and even TV has had a 20 per cent cut in wages over the last 20 years. We get less and less," he says.