Macbeth review: Cautious, thoughtful, shy… Ralph Fiennes even has a comic touch in this new production of Shakespeare’s Scottish tragedy, writes PATRICK MARMION

Some Macbeths come out swinging, like big alpha males.

Non-Oscar nominee Ralph Fiennes in this spellbinding new production of Shakespeare’s Scottish tragedy, which opened in Liverpool last night, before dates in Edinburgh, London – and Washington DC next year.

For Fiennes’ tense, tortured thinking soldier, it would be all too natural to play a knuckle-dragging primate. At first almost ashamed, he can hardly bring himself to look Duncan, the King of Scotland, whose job he secretly desires, in the eyes.

But he is encouraged by three escaped witches – and a slender and kind Indira Varma as his henchwoman – in this modern version of the supernatural tragedy.

Although this is the first time we’ve seen Fiennes’ Warlord in combat gear, he’s never really comfortable with power plays. He’s a reluctant outsider who, no matter how hard he tries, never really fits in. It’s a clever way to soothe his guilty conscience when he’s caught in a terrifying waking nightmare after the famous “murder in his sleep” – the killing of the king in his own home.

The witches who tempt Macbeth look like a trio of homeless vegan students who are bored with trying to lure people to damnation with incantations and sorcery. But they do have a nice Exorcist style moment as they turn the Thane’s assassins into puppets

Fiennes, wary, brooding and hideous, makes you wonder what he and his “heat-suppressed brain” will do next in a nerve-wracking, tense performance that finds him constantly looking over his shoulder. Could it have used a little more sparkle and energy? Perhaps. Instead, he relies on an unsettling sense of dread from which there is no turning back.

There are also some comic touches to lighten the mood; and Fiennes has an intimate, almost sweet relationship with Varma as his glamourous wife. She is unexpectedly excited at the prospect of becoming queen… and is shocked to learn what she will do to achieve it. When she finally achieves this goal, she slips into a sensational tight green dress at her inauguration.

But the lack of sleep that follows does not disappoint either: panic and hallucinations mix with glaring desperation. The witches who tempt Macbeth look like a trio of homeless vegan students who are bored with trying to lure people to damnation with incantations and sorcery. But they do have a nice Exorcist style moment as they turn the Thane’s assassins into puppets.

Elsewhere, Simon Godwin’s interpretation of Emily Burns’ abridged text is solid and clear rather than imaginative or startling.

Elsewhere, Simon Godwin’s interpretation of Emily Burns’ abridged text is solid and clear rather than imaginative or startling.

The location of the warehouse, which spans a shopping center in Fairfield, allows the public to enter through a smoking battlefield of burnt trees and a grilled car. The stage itself is a concrete bunker that doubles as a design castle.

Although the walls scream blood and ghosts appear behind glass doors, there is little other visual interest. The fact that the soldiers who liberate the Scots at Dunsinane are wearing UN peacekeeping uniforms also speaks volumes of the production’s modest political ambitions. But it’s probably a sensible precaution: the English forces liberating the Scots could still be in trouble as the show moves north of the border.

Wladimir Putin will certainly set aside the nasty banquet table where the Macbeths gather for the eerie central scene haunted by Banquo’s ghost. But as a megalomaniacal gangster tyrant, Fiennes’ outsider is much more interesting than his hellish Russian counterpart.