X-Men star James McAvoy threatens critic at wife's show with 'electric shock treatment' The Donmar in Covent Garden revived not merely Jean Racine's great work Berenice this week, but also, inadvertently, a feud between James McAvoy, the husband of the show's star Anne-Marie Duff, and a somnolent theatre critic. When Miss Duff last appeared on stage in Cause Célèbre at the Old Vic, McAvoy had been dismayed when the man sitting beside him had started to snore cacophonously. Insult had been added to injury when he discovered that it was Paul Taylor, who was supposedly reviewing his wife's performance for The Independent. In a heated exchange, McAvoy left him in no doubt about what he felt about his professionalism. One year on, it was a case of ding, dong, seconds out as the Atonement star took his seat in the stalls to see his wife play Berenice opposite Stephen Campbell Moore's Titus. Shrewdly, the Donmar management had placed Taylor in the row behind McAvoy and out of earshot. When Mandrake informed McAvoy that Taylor was looking relatively perky this time, the amiable actor laughed. "That's good to hear," he said. Otherwise, it might have to be the electric shock treatment. Last year, Taylor's newspaper elected not to run his review of Cause Célèbre, which he had only glimpsed, at best. A spokesman had insisted at the time that Taylor had been "ill" during the performance. The Independent was the only serious newspaper not to run a review of Berenice in its print edition on Wednesday. Happily, its spokesman assures me that Taylor is "in the rudest of health."