Stanley Baxter shows no sign of ending love of radio

How much does Stanley Baxter love radio? Well, the fact he recorded his latest Stanley Baxter Playhouse series on his 90th birthday is a clue.

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There are only two serious faces in Stanley Livingstone Baxter's living room today - and they both belong to the Bafta masks sitting on top of the sideboard.

Forget all that hubble, bubble toil and trouble business, Stanley Baxter has a very different version of events at Dunsinane to tell. He plays Macbeth's porter, sorry, "personal servant", who has polished his rat-stomping, wolf-wrestling master over the years to make him fit for kingship. But all that civilising went for a burton when Macbeth introduces his bride... a strapping lass whose ability to punch out an ox with one blow swept Macbeth off his cloddish feet. The wiles of the would-be kingmaker-porter and the real fate of Duncan play out seamlessly in Rona Munro's clever piece, knowingly spiced with the odd Bard quote. I'm not going to spoil the plotline, but it is nigh on brilliant, with the veteran Baxter still hitting all the notes faultlessly. Almost perfect listening.

There's no holding Stanley Baxter, now in his mid-eighties and apparently becoming as indestructible as Macbeth claimed to be in Shakespeare's play. A new series of The Stanley Baxter Playhouse starts with a comedy written by Scottish playwright Rona Munro which retells the saga from the viewpoint of the clownish Porter. Gordon Kennedy plays Macbeth and Siobhan Redmond as Lady Macbeth consolidates her CV of wicked females, while Baxter himself takes the Porter's role, assuring us that he had great plans for his master, before everything went pear-shaped.

The preview CD didn't make it in time for our print deadline, but I have no hesitation in recommending this comedy purely on the basis of the talent involved. Bill Paterson has written the perfect Baxter vehicle: two brothers, separated by ten years and widely differing musical tastes, try to decide on the music to be played at a friend's funeral. Paterson was reluctant to co-star but says, "actors are terrible for blaming other people - writers, directors - but this stuff is all my own rubbish and that makes it quite liberating"