Written by Alyx Vincent
Macbeth is inevitable.
William Shakespeare’s brilliantly brutal act of tragic horror and horrific tragedy has been doing its bloody business for audiences for more than 400 years, and it’s showing no signs of mercy.
In recent years, the stage and screen has seen no less than Kenneth Branagh, Denzel Washington, Patrick Stewart, Ethan Hawke, and Michael Fassbender each deliver their take on the Bard’s doomed Scottish noble. And now, Ralph Fiennes throws his sword in the ring.
The Oscar nominee stars in a new production of Macbeth on stage at the Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington, D.C. through May 5, and in a performance filmed in London that is being screened in cinemas around the world on May 2 and 5 via Trafalgar Releasing in partnership with Wessex Grove and Underbelly.
Co-starring Indira Varma and directed by Simon Godwin, this iteration of the Scottish Play is a wicked delight.
See, with more than four centuries of predecessors, each production of Macbeth demands, for lack a better word, a take. Joel Coen’s Oscar-nominated The Tragedy of Macbeth (2021), starring Washington, was “German Expressionist Macbeth,” in all of its arch black and white glory. Branagh’s 2013 filmed production, which he directed and starred in, was “Ham Macbeth” because no one chews scenery like Branagh. Fassbender’s 2015 movie from Assassin’s Creed director Justin Kurzel was “Whisper Macbeth,” because the primary dramatic conceit seemed to be inaudible dialogue.
The delightful thing about this Macbeth is how Fiennes and Godwin swerve the audience. At first we think it’s going to be militaristic, “Camo Macbeth,” fitting given the play’s battlefield opening with Macbeth’s heralded prowess as a merciless soldier and Fiennes’ similar 2011 cinematic approach to Shakespeare’s Coriolanus.
For the uninitiated, or those who haven’t thought about Macbeth since high school, it’s the story of a Scottish lord and his wife who, following an ominous prophecy delivered by a trio of witches, quickly rise in their country’s political ranks while leaving a trail of devastation in their wake. It’s compellingly nasty piece of work, and always has been.
But rather than give the audience a war-torn horror show, Fiennes and Godwin quickly make an incredibly savvy pivot. Once Macbeth becomes a true tyrant, he trades in his fatigues for a suit and tie. The war room and banquet hall, after all, have become the boardroom. This is “Corporate Macbeth.” The character has been praised for his brutality before he ever steps foot on stage, and he only becomes truly terrifyingly violent once he ascends to the head of the table, commissioning murders as if they were company policy, a shark’s tooth grin below his dead and hollow haunted eyes.
So much of Macbeth is concerned with inevitability, destiny, life as a procession of clock-punching days. We are all marching towards, well, something – maybe even another production of Macbeth, sooner rather than later. But the further we go and the more things change, what if they are always more or less the same?
Fiennes does stellar work here. He’s introduced as world weary, burdened with emotional battle scars that never leave him, even as the character’s attire and surroundings change to something more “respectable.” Killers and madmen, he and Godwin seem to argue, can be found wherever structures of power allow men to rule over one another, either by the pen or the sword.
