Side View of Macbeth

When I heard last year that Ralph Fiennes was going to play Macbeth for the Shakespeare Theatre in Washington, D.C., my hometown (or close – I grew up in Arlington), I hastened to buy an overpriced ticket. As a friend from that acting company explained to me over email, the theater’s commitment to “Shakespeare for All,” involving the unusual siting of Macbeth performances in a gritty industrial area of D.C., did not extend to making tickets affordable to non-affluent Washingtonians. Whatever! I have wanted to see Fiennes in more Shakespearean roles ever since I saw his unmatchably disdainful Coriolanus on film some twenty years ago. So I paid my $350 ticket-plus-computer-sales fee and, on the day after Shakespeare’s birthday, drove the nine hours from Kalamazoo, Michigan, to what seemed like an abandoned factory warehouse in the non-touristy W Street area of northeast Washington. Accompanied by an old college friend, I sat outside by the food trucks and talked Shakespeare with other patrons from suburban Virginia and Maryland until two vast metal doors opened to admit us to a dark, cavernous entryway. We walked past dimly lit blocks of crumbling concrete surrounding a rusted-out car that resembled one I’d seen parked outside the theater. The mood was set.

The converted theater space on W Street features a square thrust stage, which was largely kept…