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

Leading Shakespeare director Simon Godwin turns Liverpool’s cavernous warehouse The Depot into an unsettling backdrop for this visceral gut-punch of a production

Ralph Fiennes takes on the role of the murderous Scottish king (Matt Humphrey)

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.