Romeo and Juliet now playing at the Duke of York’s theatre in the West End of London, has the actors using mikes as part of the action, giving a dimension to the thoughts of the characters.   It is part of the vision of the director Jamie Lloyd and I think it works well.  In the Noel Coward theatre next door, where Sir Ian Mckellan stars as Falstaff in The Player King, there are also microphones linked to the speakers.  It’s something that the theatre management use to ensure that everyone in the audience can hear. This is now common, although comparatively new in non musical theatre.  More than 10 years ago Trevor Nunn used radio mikes at the National because there is a known small ‘dead’ area in the Lyttleton where the sound is lost.  The radio mikes were dropped because audiences felt that the richness and nuance of the speaking voices of the actors was lost by them being miked up.  For more experienced actors microphones take some getting used to because as they move downstage they become aware of the effect of the mikes on their voice.
For a few years now, older well known theatre actors have had to contend with some younger actors who have not been able to be heard in large auditoriums.  They have been sympathetic because they have realized that the voice and diction coaching these actors have been given, has not been of the standard that they received.   It is a dying art or skill, because the work is now in film and TV and the ability to reach the back of an auditorium with your voice is not primary for an actor’s career.  However, good actors have good voices on film and in the theatre.
At the end of the nineteenth century audiences were mesmerized by the voices of Ellen Terry and Sir Henry Irving at the huge Lyceum and Drury Lane theatres.  A different age of theatre, but magical enough, and Sir Henry Irving’s statue in front of the National Gallery is there to remind us.