Three Stars, Three Ways, Three Classic Plays

LONDON — Saoirse Ronan may be the main attraction of “The Tragedy of Macbeth,” as Shakespeare’s play is billed at the Almeida Theater, where it will run through Nov. 27. Yet, not for the first time in the director Yaël Farber’s career, Farber rules every minute of this attenuated account of the famously short work.

Running nearly an hour longer than many “Macbeths,” the production conjoins sound, lighting and design to conjure a haunting mood that does more for the play than any individual’s performance. The menace and foreboding are palpable before the three witches have spoken a word.

Where, then, does this leave Ronan, the superb Irish film actress and four-time Oscar nominee, in her British stage debut? She sometimes seems a decorative accessory to an exercise in total theater in which Tim Lutkin’s scalding lighting design, for instance, shines as bright as any Hollywood star.

Yes, Ronan is given more to do than many Lady Macbeths, to foreground the actress most audience members have come to see. She’s there for the slaughter of Lady Macduff (Akiya Henry) and her children, which in turn reduces Ronan’s initially demure purveyor of evil to an anxious, hysterical wreck.

But even as James McArdle in the title role builds to a vocal frenzy, we’re drawn to the hazily lit stage, which fills with water at the end, so the play’s combatants can splash about. (Those seated near the front might want to bring ponchos just in case.)

Farber’s actors work hard, and often well, but they’re subsidiary to the atmosphere of gloom and dread she creates. That stays with you long after the thrill of celebrity has worn off.

There’s never any doubting the intense stage presence of Cush Jumbo, the blazing talent known to TV audiences from “The Good Fight” and “The Good Wife” and who, unlike Ronan, cut her teeth in the theater. Some years back, she played Mark Antony in an all-female London production of “Julius Caesar” that was later seen in New York.

Her return to the stage here as Hamlet, at the Young Vic through Nov. 13, constitutes an event. It’s just a shame that the director Greg Hersov’s modern-dress production doesn’t more frequently rise to the level of a star who is also the rare Black British actress to take this iconic role.

Now and again, you sense inspiration. I liked the idea of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern as selfie-taking hipsters who try their best to engage with the prickly Danish prince. Tara Fitzgerald’s Gertrude is an emotionally reined-in fashionista who may never have had an honest emotion in her life — until it’s too late.

Elsewhere, Adrian Dunbar is a surprisingly dull Claudius; Joseph Marcell’s twinkly Polonius plays to the house, as if milking the character’s self-satisfaction for laughs. (His murder is bewilderingly staged to minimal impact, which seems odd given its importance as an early indicator of Hamlet’s building rage.)

Throughout an unevenly paced evening, the androgynous Jumbo sets Hamlet apart as surely the smartest person in the room, and also the most furious. “To be or not to be?” feels less like an existential rumination than like the angry outburst of someone who’s had enough.

I’ve seen more moving Hamlets, yet Jumbo fully catches the edgy restlessness of a protean character. Purring “this likes me well” of the knife he will use in combat, Jumbo’s Hamlet separately refers to “the very witching time of night.” This got me thinking: If Jumbo is looking for more Shakespearean roles, as I hope she is, what about having a go at Macbeth or his lady — or both?

It’s not long ago that I caught another unusual choice for Hamlet in the age-inappropriate Ian McKellen. At 82, the acting veteran is still onstage in Britain, this time in the starry company of Francesca Annis and Martin Shaw in “The Cherry Orchard.” This Chekhov revival, directed, as was McKellen’s “Hamlet,” by his longtime friend and colleague Sean Mathias, is on view through Nov. 13 in the riverside town of Windsor, and is worth the trip.

Unlike the two Shakespeares, Chekhov’s 1904 play is kept in period and brings to mind the name-heavy productions of the classics that used to be mainstays of the West End but aren’t so much anymore. In a vital new adaptation by the American playwright Martin Sherman (“Bent”), this “Cherry Orchard” even indulges in a little gender-bending, with the eccentric uncle, Gaev, played by a tearful Jenny Seagrove — last seen as Gertrude to McKellen’s Hamlet.

The focus of the play remains Madame Ranevskaya, the financially heedless aristocrat newly returned from Paris to the ancestral Russian estate that will soon be sold out from under her. Annis, a onetime Juliet to McKellen’s Romeo, is perfectly cast in a role that capitalizes on her natural elegance and luxuriant voice. Shaw, too, is in terrific form as the wealthy Lopakhin, the peasant’s son made good whose warnings about the fate of the orchard go unheeded.

Shuffling about with a cane, a long beard tumbling from his chin, McKellen seizes the role of the aging manservant, Firs, without stealing focus from his colleagues. “I’ve lived a long time,” Firs says at one point, to an appreciative chuckle from the audience.

Like Hamlet, McKellen knows the play’s the thing. Sometimes a classic text, simply and clearly told, is all you want, or need.

The Tragedy of Macbeth. Directed by Yaël Farber. Almeida Theater, to Nov. 27.
Hamlet. Directed by Greg Hersov. Young Vic theater, to Nov. 13.
The Cherry Orchard. Directed by Sean Mathias. Theater Royal Windsor, to Nov. 13.