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.