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It’s not the first time that director Simon Godwin has sent us to hell. His Man and Superman included the passage of Don Juan languishing in limbo. Now, he takes that production’s pair, Ralph Fiennes and Indira Varma, into the hell of war.
With designer Frankie Bradshaw, he has converted a warehouse in Liverpool into a theatre of war for Macbeth. The audience first shuffles through the detritus of a battle’s aftermath where dazed soldiers survey the wreckage. But it’s more than an atmospheric concept; more than any production I’ve seen, it contextualises the bloody logic and martial conditioning that drives Macbeth to his downfall.
Fiennes captures that with a muscularity to affirm his vow that “the firstlings of my heart shall be the firstlings of my hand”, instinctively drawing a dagger on the witches. The brilliance of his performance is in becoming the dagger he hallucinates. His movements are jabs, his wrists flicking, hands swatting. He often angles his face down to use his forehead as a mallet, planting it against a servant to rebuff their news of invasion.
Fiennes’ characteristic hunched posture here suggests he’s always anticipating the weight of the crown on his head. We never see it — only illusory — while Varma as Lady Macbeth wears a tiara of glistening shards as though assembled from shrapnel. She understands that it’s the Lady who’s the leader, sweeping her hand across the audience in her “Come, Spirits” soliloquy as though a queen addressing her subjects. Her speech starts mellifluous and delicate; once that “milk of human kindness” is removed, she shrieks sudden barks like the stabs she encourages her husband to deliver.
When he asks “If we should fail”, he stands straight as though her obedient soldier, following orders. Even when he’s out of body armour, his torso remains stiff, his chest puffed out. And you can hear the marching steps in his speech: his “tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow” is delivered not as weary, broken resignation but committed, inexorable strides forward.
Just as the set transitions us from the spoiled nature of the battlefield to the hard concrete of the military compound, Fiennes also shifts into the unnatural. His constant writhing and twisting neck — meeting Lady Macbeth’s instruction to “be the serpent” — is nicely juxtaposed against the humanity of the other characters. Ben Turner’s Macduff receives the news of his family’s slaughter with a devastating stillness; the only thing that moves are the tears that spill from his eyes.
Less developed are the production’s ideas for the witches. They come spluttering out of the battlefield, releasing a wail that rises into a siren, but the implication that they’re brutalised by that same bloodshed as Macbeth isn’t advanced. Apart from Lucy Mangan’s wide-eyed look of shell-shock, they’re not particularly “weird”, but quiet, vague spectators who observe with curiosity more than malevolence.
That comes instead from the design. Jai Morjaria’s lighting shows darkness closing in as the characters observe “Dark night strangles the travelling lamp”. Doors don’t so much slide as slice open, to the sound of scraping metal. After the murders, blood trickles down from a line at the top of the back wall as though from a slit throat. With frequent blood spurts and a moment when Fiennes gnaws savagely on Macduff’s neck, it’s a Macbeth that quickens the pulse, then goes for the jugular.
★★★★☆
To December 20 at The Depot, Liverpool, then touring to Edinburgh, London and Washington, DC, macbeththeshow.com