Macbeth review: Blood splatters galore as Ralph Fiennes becomes a brutal Scottish king

Audiences have been spoiled for starry productions of Macbeth recently. Saoirse Ronan chose to make her London stage debut as Lady Macbeth in Yael Farber’s take on the Scottish play in 2021; Daniel Craig’s first post-Bond project was a Broadway production, in which he appeared alongside Oscar nominee Ruth Negga. And next month, David Tennant will play the bloodthirsty thane at the Donmar Warehouse. What is it about this tale of brutal tyrants, calculating ambition and the corrosive effect of power that has theatre’s luminaries in thrall right now? Who could possibly say?

And there’s more: before Tennant’s take comes this visceral gut-punch of a production, starring two more heavy hitters, Ralph Fiennes and Indira Varma, as the scheming central couple. Directed by Simon Godwin, fresh from helming Romeo & Juliet and Much Ado About Nothing at the National, its biggest innovation is to transplant the performance to a cavernous warehouse at The Depot, the film and TV studios just outside the centre of Liverpool (the show will head to Edinburgh’s Royal Highland Centre and then to London’s Dock X in the new year).

Macbeth, with its witchy interludes and base notes of the uncanny, certainly benefits from being plucked out of the relative cosiness of a traditional theatre. The Depot’s unfussy space proves a versatile backdrop; you enter through an immersive antechamber, picking your way through burned-out cars and rubble before arriving in the auditorium itself.

Custom-built for the production, it feels both lofty and intimate, though you might bemoan the lack of legroom. The audience is packed in close quarters and placed in the thick of the action. When blood splatters from Steffan Rhodri’s Banquo (and this is a production so very steeped in blood, even by Macbeth’s gory standards), you can feel the front few rows shuffle backwards in their seats so as to avoid any rogue droplets.

Fiennes and Varma’s Macbeths are a well-matched couple; the power balance between the two is not exaggerated too much in favour of the latter. This only makes Varma’s Lady Macbeth a more agile and intriguing presence, as she switches from charming hostess to murderer by proxy with just a subtle modulation of pitch and tone. As Macbeth, Fiennes starts out on the verge of breathlessness and seems to slow throughout, a man weighed down by his past and future, though he still manages to bring dashes of manic levity, especially during the banquet scene.

The pair’s castle resembles an apocalyptic Grand Design, all Scandi symmetry, cold neon lighting and a sliding glass panel, used during a handful of jump-scare reveals and when the witches need a quick getaway. Those wide-eyed “weird sisters”, played here by Lucy Mangan, Danielle Fiamanya and Lola Shalam, make an unsettling trio of outsiders, their battered puffa coats and clompy boots anomalous in the play’s sharply tailored bubble of military uniforms, jewel-toned gowns and sleek suits; a scene in which they ventriloquise their prophecies through other speakers is especially chilling, thanks to some clever sound work.

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Godwin’s use of space is striking throughout, but it steps up a gear in the final act, when the auditorium doors spring open to reveal the antechamber again, this time lit up with flames and crackling fireworks. And as Malcolm’s rebel army files down through the stalls on the beat of a drum, clutching their Birnam Wood off-cuts to make the witches’ prophecy come true and sending shadows dancing across the walls, the effect is truly haunting.

The Depot, Liverpool until 20 December; then Royal Highland Centre, Edinburgh from 12 to 27 January and Dock X, London from 10 February to 23 March