Former Shortland Street star Amanda Billing to play Lady Macbeth

Amanda Billing will bring Shakespeare's most famous female character to life in February.

Former long-time Shortland Street star Amanda Billing is set to play Lady Macbeth at Auckland's 'summer of Shakespeare' revival at the popular pop-up Globe theatre.

From December 7 the Globe replica will be back at Shakespeare Gardens at Ellerslie Racecourse with a talented line up appearing in five Shakespeare productions including A Midsummer Night's Dream, the Merchant of Venice and Julius Caesar.

In February Billing will bring Shakespeare's most famous female character, Lady Macbeth, to life for Macbeth, telling the Herald on Sunday it was a "bucket list" role for her.

Award-winning actress Billing played Dr Sarah Potts on Shortland Street for eight years until 2014, when the character- who had multiple sclerosis- died, prompting an outpouring of national Street fans' grief.

"It's an absolutely privilege to do one of Shakespeare's plays at all, and I think the pop-up Globe is a really wonderful concept," she said.

"Lady Macbeth is a person close to my heart. She represents lots of stuff that everybody deals with- feeling like they need more to be enough. That is something everyone deals with, you only have to look at Instagram to know that.

The design of the set means the actors on stage "can't hide" and it would push her out of her comfort zone, she said. She challenged audiences to see a modern day spin on the 400 year old works: "Don't be scared of Shakespeare, because it's meant to be heard and not read."

The pop up Globe theatre.

Billing will star alongside various other industry big names on stage over the season including Eagle VS Shark actor and director Jason Te Kare, Legend of the Seeker actor Peter Daube, and various performers from the United Kingdom, and the United States.

The Globe pop-up is a world-first temporary replica and has had three seasons in two years, after being launched in 2016 by former London Globe theatre producer Dr Miles Gregory.

It has been enormously successful, selling hundreds of thousands of tickets, and is now running in Melbourne.

Macbeth opens February 8, and The Comedy of Errors February 22. Visit popupglobe.co.nz.