Ralph Fiennes's much-anticipated portrayal of Shakespeare's tragic Scottish king has opened not in London or in the US but in a warehouse on the outskirts of Liverpool before visiting those other places, which is great to see.
Simon Godwin's production is immersed in Frankie Bradshaw's design; it isn't 'immersive' in the Punchdrunk sense, but the audience does enter the auditorium through an area where nervous-looking modern soldiers stand around a burnt-out car in the midst of concrete rubble with the sounds of distant explosions and helicopters and jets passing overhead, just as we are growing used to seeing on the news from Gaza or Ukraine.
The auditorium is a more conventional thrust stage arrangement from which that tableau cannot be seen, although you may catch a glimpse at the very end when the set opens up. The stage is built from layers of concrete decaying from bomb blasts around the edges with a building of bland concrete panels dominating the platform, the walls of which are running with blood by the second half.
The Witches (Lucy Mangan, Danielle Fiamanya and Lola Shalam) erupt out of an explosion to begin the play, looking like they could be refugees from a bombed city in their dusty anoraks. Fiennes's Macbeth arrives soon after in battle fatigues and full pack with Steffan Rhodri's Banquo to receive their predictions—or are these women actually bringing these events about? They appear with increasing frequency as observers, and sometimes their lines, such as "double, double, toil and trouble", are said over the unfolding events rather than in separate scenes as though they are conjuring up what we are seeing.
Indira Varma's Lady Macbeth is an ambitious, upper-middle-class woman who has to push her husband into doing the deed he said he would do, but then is increasingly disturbed by his building paranoia and violence. Fiennes's Macbeth looks battle-hardened but occasionally a little pathetic in scenes with his wife, whom he needs to spur him on, but he becomes more unstable and dangerous as she loses control over him.
Ben Turner's Macduff takes the killing of his wife (Rebecca Scroggs) and children hard in a heartbreaking scene that feels like it could be from a modern war, which spurs him on to his final battle with Macbeth, with what look like long butchers' knives rather than swords (fight director Kate Waters). He remains on stage, slumped exhausted next to the body of his foe, to the end rather than returning with the tyrant's head.
Emily Burns's script is more of a remix than a full adaptation, as this is still very much Shakespeare's play. The Porter's scene for comic relief has gone, but humour has been found in other places, particularly between the Macbeths, which works surprisingly well. There is great emphasis on the words across the production; every line is spoken with slow deliberation, perhaps a bit too slow on occasion, which gives both the words and their meaning great clarity (voice coach is Jeannette Nelson).
While in many ways, despite the venue, it is largely a conventional presentation of the play, it is certainly a tensely atmospheric one, helped by the intimidating sound design of Christopher Shutt and sparse music of Asaf Zohar as well as Jai Morjaria's lighting design and some shocking pyrotechnics in the final scene (the cold wind blowing through the theatre on the afternoon I saw it even added to the atmosphere).
But overall it feels exciting and looks sadly relevant to events in the modern world without pushing those parallels down our throats, and it's great to see it here in the North West first.