Ralph Fiennes and David Tennant: Two Very Different ‘Macbeths’

There is more than one way to tell a story. In England, two equally impressive new productions of “Macbeth” prove this, both featuring major stars in the title role and adopting strikingly different approaches to Shakespeare’s classic tale of hubris and betrayal.

The first, starring Ralph Fiennes (“The Menu,” “The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar”), runs at the Depot, a cavernous converted warehouse on an industrial estate in Liverpool. Despite its grittily authentic set design and costumes, it is for the most part a conventional, realist treatment. The second, at the Donmar Warehouse, in London, and starring David Tennant (“Doctor Who,” “Des”), is a rather more high-concept affair, heavy on ambience and atmospherics.

The leading men are, likewise, a study in contrasts: Fiennes’s Macbeth is a hulking, lugubrious presence, whereas Tennant’s is a gaunt, energetic bundle of angst.

The Fiennes “Macbeth,” directed by Simon Godwin, runs through Dec. 20 at the Depot in Liverpool, before moving on to Edinburgh, London and Washington, D.C., in 2024. The makeshift playhouse features an immersive set: To get to their seats, theatergoers must file past a bleak, dusty landscape of rubble and burned-out cars, suggestive of a war zone. The stage set is an elegant geometric structure in forbidding gray, comprising a number of doors, balconies and stairways, representing the various Scottish castles in which much of the action unfolds. Thin, vertical streaks of blood gradually materialize on its walls as the story progresses.

The plot will be familiar to many. Three clairvoyant witches tell Macbeth he will become King of Scotland. With further encouragement from Lady Macbeth (Indira Varma), he proceeds to murder the reigning monarch, Duncan (Keith Fleming), forcing his heirs into exile and taking the crown for himself. He has to carry out several more murders in order to cover his trail, and the guilt starts to consume him; Lady Macbeth urges him to man up, but her own conscience catches up with her in the form of somnambulistic terrors and, eventually, suicide.

In this production, Macbeth and his male co-protagonists appear in 21st-century military fatigues; when we see them, intermittently, in civilian attire, it’s understatedly stylish contemporary get-up. (The costumes are by Frankie Bradshaw.) That stark juxtaposition drives home the brutal reality of strongman politics: The ruling class and the military elite are one. There are some deft visual effects — the disappearance of the three witches in puffs of smoke is particularly pleasing — and the acting is consistently strong. Ben Turner is a powerful Macduff, and Varma brings a subtle, darkly comic energy to Lady Macbeth during the famous scene in which Macbeth, confronted with the reproachful ghost of the murdered Banquo, has a meltdown in the middle of a dinner party.

A markedly different aesthetic was on offer in the compact, intimate environs of the Donmar, where theatergoers were required to put on headphones upon entry. In this “Macbeth” — directed by Max Webster, featuring Cush Jumbo as Lady Macbeth and running through Feb. 10, 2024 — the actors wear discreet headsets and their speech is transmitted to the audience digitally.

I was predisposed to dismiss this as a gimmick, but was pleasantly surprised. The transmitted audio imbues the words with an added richness and immediacy — the deep aural texture of a radio play. The conceit comes into its own in the scenes featuring supernatural elements (the witches, Banquo’s ghost) and during Lady Macbeth’s descent into madness, when eerie vocal echoes are overlaid on the dialogue. At times, the sound alternates abruptly between the left and right earphones.

The set and costume design, by Rosanna Vize, are strikingly abstract. With the exception of Lady Macbeth, who wears a white formfitting dress, the cast are clad in an austere uniform of gray or black tops — turtlenecks, vests or collarless jackets — with dark kilts and black Chelsea boots. The stage is a simple white rectangle, at the rear of which, in a boxed-off section behind a transparent screen, a small troupe of musicians provide the play’s soundtrack: a gorgeous blend of Gaelic song and religious chant, composed by Alasdair Macrae and featuring beautifully haunting vocals by the Scottish singer Kathleen MacInnes.

Fiennes and Tennant are both outstanding talents, but very different in corporeal stature and bearing. Just a few months ago, Fiennes’s brother, Joseph, delivered a compelling turn as an England soccer coach in “Dear England,” at the National Theater, in London, and there were echoes of that performance here: a certain tentative, beard-stroking pensiveness and lumbering indecision. Ralph’s frame as Macbeth is bearlike, and his turmoil is a slow burn. (I was also reminded of the Russian mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin, whose ill-fated uprising against President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, and subsequent demise, had shades of Shakespearean tragedy.)

In contrast, Tennant, with his slim-line physique and withdrawn, vaguely haunted-looking face, has a more expressive emotional energy that lends itself to treacherous intrigue and anguished remorse alike. He is frantic, almost from the get-go. An unlikelier warrior, perhaps, but a more convincing worrier.

The truth, of course, is that “Macbeth” doesn’t really require too much jazzing up, because its themes resonate easily enough without embellishment. One is always struck, in particular, by the prescience of the play’s pointed depiction of machismo, long before “toxic masculinity” became a buzz-phrase. Almost every misdeed is incited with an appeal to virility, whether it’s Lady Macbeth goading her husband into going through with their murderous plan (“You will be so much more the man!”), or Macbeth using similar rhetoric to persuade his hit men to kill Banquo.

A light touch is key. What these two productions get right is that they conjure just enough novelty, in their visual and aural landscapes, to freshen things up, while still ensuring that the text remains center stage — in all its timeless glory.