WALL STREET JOURNAL REVIEW:  ‘Macbeth’ Review: Ralph Fiennes’s Ferocious Tyrant

The actor stars in a production by Washington’s Shakespeare Theatre Company that finds a chilling, often devastating contemporary relevance in the classic tragedy.

By Charles Isherwood

April 15, 2024 5:38 pm ET  – Washington, 1301 W Street NE, Washington, $35-$345, 202-547-1122, closes May 5

Ralph Fiennes in ‘Macbeth,’ directed by Simon Godwin. PHOTO: MARC BRENNER

 

“Blood will have blood.” Those stark words, spoken in a soul-deadened voice by Ralph Fiennes, acquire a harsh contemporary resonance in the stunningly good production of “Macbeth” being presented by the Shakespeare Theatre Company.

Macbeth

Simon Godwin, artistic director of the company since 2019, has staged the tragedy with a stark emphasis on its relevance to our conflict-rattled world, where killing inevitably seems to beget more killing, to paraphrase that Macbeth quote. Presented not at the company’s Washington home but in a former TV studio in the city’s Brentwood neighborhood, the production envelops the audience in the unsettling atmosphere of a war-ravaged country. (The show was previously seen in Liverpool, Edinburgh and London, and this is its only U.S. engagement.)

To reach their seats, audience members walk a path amid the rubble of destroyed buildings, where hunched soldiers pore over maps. A burned-out wreck of a car sits amid the debris—disturbingly reminding this viewer of the recent killings of World Central Kitchen workers in the Gaza Strip, perhaps because José Andrés, who founded that organization, rose to fame as a Washington chef. At intervals during the play, the sounds of planes, or drones, charge the air.

“Macbeth” is not intrinsically a play about war—the conflict that brings honor to the title character has ended as the play begins. But Mr. Godwin and Mr. Fiennes implicitly, and persuasively, make the case that Macbeth’s experience in battle may have inured him to the horror of killing, even as he argues against his wife’s fervent urging to grasp the crown by murdering King Duncan (Keith Fleming).

Macbeth’s battlefield acts may also have ignited in him an adrenaline-fueled susceptibility to the eerie hints about his future chanted by the “weird sisters” in the opening scene. These figures, clad like all the cast in contemporary clothes, theirs being more ragged, might be the unresting ghosts of women who died during the prior conflict, unintended victims now resurrected to bring about his downfall.

Lola Shalam, Lucy Mangan and Danielle Fiamanya. PHOTO: MARC BRENNER

And while Mr. Fiennes, one of the great Shakespearean actors of his generation, speaks the verse with a clarity and fluidity that captivates with its spellbinding beauty—when it comes to language, he is an actor in the classical British mold of Laurence Olivier and John Gielgud—his performance acquires a ferocity and volatility that one might attribute to the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder. Macbeth’s moral and mental equilibrium has been shattered by the violent acts he has already committed.

The adaptation, by Emily Burns, is intelligent and economical, eliminating most notably the porter scene—the universe conjured here having no room for comedy. And Mr. Fiennes’s transfixing performance is complemented by first-rate work from the rest of the cast.

Indira Varma is a strikingly cool Lady Macbeth, her calculating designs revealed to us without a trace of gothic histrionics; she comes across more as an ambitious woman advising her husband how to climb the corporate ladder. And she’s matter-of-fact when grabbing the bloody daggers from Macbeth to pin the murder on Duncan’s attendants, acting with the blithe annoyance of a wife irked by her husband’s petty incompetence.

Indira Varma and Mr. Fiennes. PHOTO: MARC BRENNER

Yet when Macbeth reveals to her that he has had Banquo (the quietly dignified Steffan Rhodri) murdered, Ms. Varma’s Lady Macbeth registers shock, her startled expression indicating her realization that the monster she helped bring forth from her previously noble husband cannot be contained.

Among the supporting players, Ben Turner gives an impressive performance as Macbeth’s adversary Macduff. The scene in which news is brought to him of the brutal murder of his wife and children is played with an almost terrifying emotional equanimity; here, too, we perhaps are meant to see how wartime experience has hardened the hearts of even upright men.

I have never seen a performance of this mighty tragedy that is so frequently devastating. The murder of Lady Macduff (a fiery Rebecca Scroggs) and her children is utterly harrowing. So, too, is Lady Macbeth’s “mad” scene, in which Ms. Varma is barely recognizable as the masterly woman we saw earlier, her frenzied attempts to wash her hands clean an echo of the mannerly way in which she and Macbeth smoothly dipped them into a crystal bowl after Duncan’s murder.

And while in many productions Macbeth’s death at the hands of Macduff almost seems a dramatic afterthought—his nihilistic speech of life being a “tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing” having marked his spiritual death—here his undignified collapse strikes a piteous chord that cuts to the heart, despite our knowledge of his barbaric deeds.

Shakespeare stagings that draw parallels to contemporary events are not uncommon, and not always successful. A Shakespeare in the Park production that depicted Julius Caesar as an analogue of Donald Trump fell flat. But without violating the text, or trying to upstage it, Mr. Godwin, aided by a superlative performance by Mr. Fiennes, succeeds in creating a “Macbeth” that speaks piercingly to the current historical moment.

After all, we don’t have to look far to find an example of a national leader who is also a ruthless murderer steeped in the blood of his adversaries, and lusting for more death. He’s the president of Russia.