INTERVIEW | THEATRE
Ralph Fiennes: my Macbeth isn’t just for the bourgeois theatre crowd
The acclaimed actor says Shakespeare is for the people — his bold new production with Indira Varma is wooing fresh audiences with radical ideas and cheap tickets at surprising venues
Something wicked: Ralph Fiennes and Indira Varma in Macbeth
OLIVER ROSSER
The Sunday Times
When Ralph Fiennes gets going, there is something of the excited child about him. He bubbles over with passion, in rhapsody about the stage and Shakespeare. Surprisingly, he is about to play Macbeth for the first time and wants the production to be theatre — but not as we know it.
He’ll be performing in odd, cavernous venues that are off the beaten track. And like a rock band — or “rock Bard” — the company is playing Liverpool, Edinburgh and London and will then try to break America, ending the run in Washington.
“There is this idea that theatre is for people who go to work, come home, put on their nice suit, go for dinner and then ‘go to the theatre’,” Fiennes says
