James McAvoy halts Macbeth to reprimand man filming show with phone

James McAvoy stopped a show of Macbeth after he saw a member of the audience filming his performance on a mobile phone.

The actor was playing the lead role at the Trafalgar Studios theatre last Thursday when he noticed a man in the front-row recording the action — despite a message at the start asking audiences not to take pictures.

A spokeswoman for the production said: “James had to ask them to put their camera away and then the performance continued. They had a camera or a mobile to their face. It was very visible and was disrupting the performance.”

An earlier performance of the show was stopped after McAvoy went to offer help after a member of the audience fainted.

Last week’s stoppage is the latest in a string of incidents in which actors — most notably the recently deceased Richard Griffiths — have remonstrated with members of the public when mobiles have gone off during a play.

Griffiths ordered a woman out of the West End production of Heroes and a man out of The History Boys at the National Theatre after both proved repeat offenders. In 2009, Ken Stott halted a performance of A View from the Bridge because of noisy schoolchildren.