Shakespearean theatre has been “poisoned” by the “bizarre” over-acting of an older generation of thespians, the director Robert Icke has said.

Icke, who is currently working with actor Andrew Scott on an Almeida theatre production of Hamlet, said the public had been put off going to see Shakespeare by the “operative modes of delivery” once preferred by actors like Sir John Gielgud.

Saying British theatre had “shot itself in both feet” thanks to an obsession with “verse speaking”, he warned the taste for pausing at the end of every Shakespeare line is “nonsense” and ruins lines that are actually “completely...normal”.