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As evidenced by his recent fretting about content warnings in theatre, Ralph Fiennes is an old-fashioned type of actor. And that cuts a couple of ways in terms of his performance as Shakespeare’s blood-drenched Scottish monarch.
On the one hand, he speaks the verse with pin-sharp clarity – of course Shakespeare can be hard to follow, but if you’re paying even a modicum of attention you’re going to have no problem deciphering Fiennes’s beautiful modulated performance, which treats every sentence as something to be luxuriated in, every esoteric bit of verbiage as something with a meaning worth unlocking.
On the other hand, his dedication to clarity doesn’t feel matched by a clear interpretation of Macbeth’s actions. As directed by Shakespeare stalwart Simon Godwin, Fiennes’s antihero seems like a nice enough bloke, who receives a prophecy about his rise to the Scottish throne and allows his posh, pragmatic wife Lady Macbeth (Indira Varma) bully him into murdering the king… and then just kind of loses it. Whether that’s through stress, paranoia or other mental health problems is never made clear. His behaviour is mercurial: at times Fiennes seems confused and vulnerable, perhaps even suggesting his Macbeth has dementia. But it hardly feels meticulously mapped out, and the general sense is that Macbeth has fallen into murderous madness because that’s what it says he does in the script – David Tennant’s malign recent Donmar Macbeth was comfortably more compelling.
Still, it’s a solid production. The commitment to clarity remains throughout. Frankie Bradshaw’s set and Asaf Zohar’s score are broodingly impressive. Varma is always great, and there’s a wonderful moment where Macbeth orders the assassination of Banquo and clear as day you see Lady M’s realise that this has gotten totally out of hand.
Lucy Mangan, Danielle Fiamanya and Lola Shalam make for fascinating witches. Young, working class coded women who move in eerie sync with each other, there’s something intensely compelling about the discomfort they cause the posh, uniformed men who they menace. Godwin also bumps up the role of Macbeth’s servant Seyton (a nervy Jonathan Case). Treated as a mere tool by his employers, you can feel his soul shrivelling as he’s asked to help with the paperwork for sundry atrocities. All very interesting… but an exact point about class never materialises.
There’s a feeling that nobody involved feels they have anything to prove – which I’d argue is not the case when it’s the third major production of ‘Macbeth’ to come to London in under a year. A handsome spin on The Scottish Play, but not a remarkable one.