Theater Review by Carol Rocamora . . . .
The immersive Macbeth at the Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington D.C. this month is more than just another classical revival. Momentous in timing, sweeping in concept, and brilliant in artistry, it’s the most spectacular production of a Shakespeare play in recent years, at least in my theater-going experience in the US and UK. Most importantly, it provides proof of the theater’s transformative powers, its infinite possibilities, and its rightfully earned place at the center of our culture.
It began as a shared vision of two great theater artists—actor Ralph Fiennes and director Simon Godwin—to stage Macbeth in a “found” space, meaning a location chosen specifically for a classic about the tragic consequences of power-mad ambition. Their intent was to set it in a modern-day warzone, to underscore its urgent relevance today. Earlier productions were mounted this season in Edinburgh, Liverpool, and London—two of which were staged in warehouses. And now, in Washington, the Shakespeare Theatre Company (STC) has chosen a former television studio in the northeast section of the city, converting it into a performance space with a seating capacity of 700 and clearing a surrounding parking area for its sell-out audiences. The results are, literally, ground-breaking.
From the moment you enter this cavernous building, you know you’re in for a unique and phenomenal theater experience. You first pass through a tangled, battle-scarred landscape (designed by Frankie Bradshaw), featuring a smoldering wrecked vehicle, fragments of war machinery, and piles of shattered concrete and rubble (reminiscent of today’s devastating photos of urban Ukraine and Gaza). Alarms blaring, sirens screaming, bombs dropping, planes soaring—these are the threatening sounds of warfare that you hear overhead. Once seated in the vast three-quarter-round auditorium, you watch Shakespeare’s story unfold on Franke Bradshaw’s sleek, modern, three-level set with a superb acting ensemble clad in generic modern war dress (costumes also by Bradshaw). The director and his design team have made their intentions clear: this is a play for our war-torn times, driven by the rule of power-mad autocrats all too familiar to us from constant media coverage. Together with Christopher Shutt’s powerful sound design, and Jai Morjaria’s striking lighting design, the cumulative effect is overpowering.
Simon Godwin’s commanding direction proceeds at the break-neck speed of a modern-day thriller, heightening the already sky-high stakes. At its center is a magnetic performance by Ralph Fiennes, the celebrated British stage and screen actor. Fiennes has embraced the challenge of Macbeth with unbridled energy and relish, building his performance with exquisite care and craft, plumbing the role’s depths as well as its contradictions, imbuing it with richness and variety. At first, he reveals Macbeth’s dark ambition in response to the witches’ first prophecy (“stars hide your fires/Let not light see my black and deep desires”). But then, after he has “done the deed” and murdered Duncan, he displays a sudden burst of contrasting doubt and fear (“To be thus is nothing.”). Back and forth he segues, from one powerful outburst to another, as his paranoia grows.
Fiennes’s charismatic interpretation literally explodes in Act II—and so does the production. In the banquet scene, Fiennes dances with delight as the newly crowned tyrant, injecting a totally unexpected dimension of humor into the role. That playfulness—punctuated by his sudden vision of Banquo’s ghost—sends shocking cross-currents into the already electrifying scene. Then “blood will have blood,” as he descends deeper into paranoia and madness, and his violence intensifies. By the time he faces what he knows will be his final battle (“tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow”), he shows a bitter resignation—to follow his fate to its terrible end.
One of the most electrifying elements of Fiennes’s performance is his ability to engage with his audience. I remember it years ago in his Hamlet when he strode downstage and stood on its edge to confront and confide in his audience with a powerful directness. His Macbeth does this, too, as if he’s determined to explain his dreadful journey—not to justify it, but rather to make us understand it. This performance choice creates a highly charged bond between the actor and his audience, one that remains long after the inevitable fall of the protagonist . . . and the curtain.
Above all, Ralph Fiennes’s stunning command of Shakespeare’s language is a towering achievement. For those of us who admired his Hamlet and Antony (on the stage) as well as Coriolanus (on film), Fiennes’s Macbeth ascends to the level of the actor whom he has most admired in the theater—namely, Sir Laurence Olivier.
As for the cast, there are numerous admirable and memorable performances. Indira Varma’s Lady Macbeth is strikingly modern. In the early scenes, she delivers her advice to her husband “to beguile the time, look like the time,” as if Shakespeare wrote it yesterday. (Her “when you durst do it, then you were a man” actually elicited laughter of recognition from the audience.) Similarly contemporary are the three Weird Sisters (aka the notorious “witches”); as costumed in today’s tattered street clothes, they resemble punk musicians from the East Village. This terrible trio (Lucy Mangan, Danielle Flamanya, and Lola Shalam) delivers its deadly prophecies with a deadpan discord that is truly chilling. Keith Fleming’s likable Duncan makes us regret his fate all the more. Ben Turner’s Macduff is especially moving when, confronted with the terrible news of his family’s demise, he allows himself to weep, telling his colleagues that he must “feel it like a man.”
In the play’s penultimate scene, director Simon Godwin offers a stunning coup de theatre with the dramatic arrival of Birnam Wood to Dunsinane Hill. It is enacted by cast members carrying huge tree boughs down the steep aisles of the theater. It’s a thrilling ending to a thrilling production for our troubled times.
The numerous high-profile productions of Macbeth this season signal its relevance today—including David Tennant’s at London’s Donmar Warehouse in January, and Macbeth: An Undoing, a new script by Zinnie Harris currently at the Theatre for a New Audience in Brooklyn, which tells the story from Lady M’s perspective (watch this space for a review shortly).
But Fiennes and Godwin’s Macbeth, with its unique setting, scope, and overpowering performance, transcends theatrical convention to address the tragedy of our times with a frightening authority, penetrating our consciousness as sharply as the tyrant’s daggers penetrated his victims.
“Alas poor country, afraid to know itself.” . . . We get the message.
Macbeth. Through May 4 at The Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington, DC (1301 W St. NE). www.shakespearetheatre.org
Photos: Marc Brenner
