Speak up, please!

When I was at Birmingham theatre school in the sixties, we had a marvellous diction teacher from trinity College dublin who taught us to train our voices: if the script called for us to whisper on stage, every word of what we said could still be heard at the back row of the stalls.

It was drilled into us that we were working in an unnatural e nvi r o nment a nd c o ul d therefore not speak naturally. the whole purpose of the exercise is that the audience hears every word of the script.

the frustration experienced by viewers watching TV dramas and being unable to hear a word the actors say is in part due to directors being obsessed with ‘ naturalism’ and the current crop of actors not having been taught that to articulate clearly you have to move your mouth. Muttering like a graduate of the method school of acting just won’t do.

LINDA SHERIDAN, York.

May I complain about a good historic viewing event spoiled by unnecessary noise? the BBC 1 programme Bloody Queens: elizabeth and Mary featured irritating, annoying music at the end of each narrative. Other historic programmes seem to get the same treatment.

Also on STV news at 6pm, after the main points of the news item, on comes this cacophony of music noise over the presenter’s voice.

J DUNCAN, Bathgate, West Lothian.

My wife and I thought it must be an age thing when we gave up on Happy Valley threequarters of the way through as we could not make out a word sarah lancashire was saying.

Between her tight lip and machine-gun delivery it was impossible to make sense of anything.

We were delighted to see from the Mail that we were not the only ones.

What a waste of a normally good actress. E. COLMAN, Castle Douglas,

Kirkcudbrightshire.