Review con­tains major spoil­ers for the RNZB’s Mac­beth — the only rea­son I’m spoil­er warn­ing a 400 year old sto­ry based loose­ly off an 1000 year old his­tor­i­cal fig­ure is that the RNZB does include some changes in its stag­ing that are more so implied in the text, and there’s also some things you want to see live rather than spoiled in a review.

The Roy­al New Zealand Bal­let (co-pro­duced with West Aus­tralian Bal­let) kicks off its 2026 sea­son with roy­al escapades turned styl­ish polit­i­cal hor­rors in a per­for­mance of Mac­beth utter­ly tren­chant for our times.

You know the themes of Mac­beth; witch­es spur a desire in Mac­beth, and his ambi­tion (and that of his wife) leads him towards mur­der, and even­tu­al­ly his down­fall, in pur­suit of the throne.

Here, Mac­beth (Bran­den Rein­ers) is a polit­i­cal prodi­gy, spurred on by his wife Lady Mac­beth (Ana Gal­lar­do Loba­nia) and three influencers/media per­son­al­i­ties (the afore­men­tioned witch­es — Kir­by Sel­chow, Ruby Ryburn and Shaun James Kel­ly) to kill Dun­can (Lau­ry­nas Vėjalis) and com­mit a vari­ety of oth­er mur­ders to find his way to the top, before his reign of ter­ror is final­ly end­ed by Mac­duff (Zacharie Dun).

For the most part, this mod­erni­sa­tion (dra­matur­gy by Ruth Lit­tle) works excel­lent­ly well, cast­ing us back to ear­ly 2000s vibes of Wall Street elite (plus iPhones), glit­terati, where actions don’t have con­se­quences and life’s just one big par­ty.

A pre­scient take, con­sid­er­ing the times we find our­selves in.

The mod­erni­sa­tion works to a point, chang­ing twi­light stab­bings to out-in-the-open poi­son­ings, an assas­si­na­tion at a bar, a for­mer­ly off-script sui­cide staged in a bath right in front of us; secrets made flesh for the view­ing audi­ence in a way they just aren’t in the orig­i­nal text, to its ben­e­fit.  Busi­ness as usu­al the day after the death of the head of a com­pa­ny? Sounds like a typ­i­cal 2026 Thurs­day,

I would per­haps ques­tion the death of Mac­duf­f’s fam­i­ly — which is implied via fiery pro­jec­tion and seems at odds with what’s print­ed in the pro­gramme, though I do com­mend not actu­al­ly show­ing it - the his­tor­i­cal prece­dent stat­ing as much.

Alice Top­p’s utter­ly inspired chore­og­ra­phy is a sight to behold. I know Mac­beth very well, have seen more than enough play­ings, and it’s impres­sive how dis­tinct­ly some of the key pieces of verse have been trans­lat­ed to the dance; what we know as bal­let col­lid­ing slick­ly with mod­ern dance and var­i­ous oth­er styles to cre­ate some­thing entire­ly unique.

Lady Mac­beth’s “Out, damned spot!” becomes a strik­ing moment of utter despon­dence, held high on the upper lev­el of the set, and cul­mi­nates with her down­ing pills and pour­ing wine over her head as she set­tles into her bath to die. A piv­otal effort from Gal­lar­do Loba­nia, tak­ing a role that’s tra­di­tion­al­ly incred­i­bly hard to find with­in its ambi­tion and its grief, and utter­ly flour­ish­ing with­in it.

The siz­zling, spicy tox­i­c­i­ty between Mac­beth and Lady Mac­beth is enough to melt our ice creams in the audi­to­ri­um, every duet between the pair an active strug­gle for pow­er, two peo­ple nev­er quite in the same mind as they leap, hold and even­tu­al­ly crum­ble apart.

What’s more is that Mac­beth and Ban­quo (Kihi­ro Kusuka­mi) — his long-time friend, in the case I’m guess­ing main con­fi­dant — have about as many duets as M/LM, the pair ini­tial­ly seem­ing to dance as ambi­tion of a lighter, less pres­sured sort before they slip away into tox­i­c­i­ty too.

The ensem­ble, too, is giv­en a lot to do; Mac­beth and his fel­low politi­cians fight­ing for con­trol on a long table at the top of the show, as well as sev­er­al group num­bers that inspire thoughts of The Great Gats­by, and all are per­formed with the flair you’d expect, not a hair out of place dur­ing very tech­ni­cal­ly com­pli­cat­ed pieces.

The most impres­sive stag­ing of a piv­otal moment in the work comes with Ban­quo appear­ing as a ghost to Mac­beth. There’s a vari­ety of ways to por­tray ghosts on stage, but dur­ing a ban­quet; the long table at the back of the stage clothed in bright red, suc­cess­ful patrons cel­e­brat­ing their wins, Ban­quo drags him­self forth from with­in the table itself, and he and Mac­beth strug­gle for pow­er in a dance that’s a vis­cer­al mir­ror to those pre­vi­ous, before Mac­beth tum­bles away, both he and his wife bro­ken, at the end.

I’d also note Ban­quo’s death itself, staged in a low­ered set, giv­ing the vibes of an under­ground bar, which involves stage com­bat inter­wo­ven with­in the dance and an active­ly impres­sive­ly-staged death as it con­cludes.

To leave out dis­cus­sion of the show’s pro­duc­tion design would feel utter­ly bereft. Both the set and light­ing design (Jon Buswell) are a spec­ta­cle, the stage divid­ed into an upper and low­er lev­el, the upper lev­el ris­ing up and down and then tip­ping at one point to cre­ate three dis­tinct play­ing spaces, with noth­ing wast­ed. Indus­tri­al, sev­er­al shades of met­al, with bloodied/rusted rem­nants appear­ing in the final scene, it tru­ly gives the expe­ri­ence of a cut­throat, unpro­tect­ed indus­try.

The cos­tumes (Ale­sia Jel­bart), too, ere on the side of min­i­mal­ist, all but three pre­dom­i­nant­ly dressed in shades of black, white or grey, with the three influ­encers dressed in red and green vis­i­bly the cen­tre of this tor­tured world, as much as oth­ers try to reach for it.

You can’t talk about this show with­out men­tion­ing its score (Christo­pher Gor­don, con­duct­ed by Hamish McK­ei­th, per­formed by the NZSO), which wan­ders into the realm of rock opera at points, Mac­beth’s strug­gle for pow­er lit­er­al­ly phys­i­cal­ly felt in the weight of the music; eerie and vis­cer­al string work that haunts the nar­ra­tive, whilst dart­ing around 40s big band and 70s soul for some of the group scenes.

Nev­er have I want­ed a RNZB score to be pur­chasable at home more than this one; what a treat.

A denoue­ment to remem­ber, Mac­beth’s final moments involve him, bro­ken, at the end of his rope, lit­er­al­ly climb­ing up a sloped wall to be put out of his mis­ery, blood slip­ping down the slope behind him as he falls, a right­ful end that is as phys­i­cal­ly com­plex as it is incred­i­ble to watch. What a show.

Visu­al­ly and per­for­ma­tive­ly a spec­ta­cle, Mac­beth lives up to the hype of its stun­ning pro­duc­tion imagery, and siz­zles with all the tox­ic spice you’d hope for. Run, don’t walk to this stag­ing, on across the coun­try now.