Macbeth

Description
In this scary, brilliantly bloody English import, the grave and velvet-voiced Patrick Stewart plays Shakespeare’s tyrant as an aging military man in a 1950s Stalinist dictatorship, stalking a set that resembles a drab underground bunker. Hot young director Rupert Goold throws in assaultive sound effects and ghostly multimedia video projections. For all the conceptual framing and cinematic shock tactics, however, the actors (including the coldly beautiful Kate Fleetwood as Lady Macbeth) deliver a smart, accessible reading of the text; all are classically trained pros of the first order, and mesh perfectly with Goold’s sensational staging.—DC