Director Drew Fracher delivers a terrific, blood-soaked, passion-filled Macbeth to the Human Race stage. It's the Dayton theater's first run at Shakespeare, and it's a memorable one.

        Macbeth is stuffed with the stuff that theatrical dreams are made on: blind ambition, brutal murders, witches, hauntings. It's a thrill ride disguised as classical tragedy.

        Theater hounds about town know that Mr. Fracher took his last run at Macbeth a year ago at Cincinnati Shakespeare in a contemporary urban setting that played out like a drug nightmare.

        For Human Race, he returns to the original setting, where the clans of Scotland are at war.

        The show opens with an effective broadsword battle (Mr. Fracher's expertise as a fight director shows well) on David Centers' smashing stage design. It plays equally well as cold and cavernous castle fortress; mysterious, impenetrable woodland; and battlefield. (All settings feature appropriately eerie sound design by Joseph Ryan Williamson).

        Brave Macbeth (Bruce Cromer) and Banquo (Randy Lee Bailey) have put down a rebellion when they have the misfortune to run across three witches who offer up predictions of power that reach deep into the secret darkness of Macbeth's heart.

        Cliff Jenkins, Jennifer Joplin and Regina Cerimele-Mechley are more demons than witches. Costumed in loincloths and body stockings marked with strange tattoos they scramble about, climb into the rafters to watch for opportunities and victims.

        They are scary and feral, jackal-like in their eating habits, whether it's bodies or souls.

        Mr. Fracher's great conceit in this Macbeth is that the witches invade the action. They appear as servants, as assassins and arguably move the action to its inevitable conclusion.

        With the supernatural tone of unrelenting evil well set — the murders are not clean little things but atrocities — Bruce Cromer and Lisa Ann Goldsmith add the emotional layerings as Lord Macbeth and his lady.

        Working beautifully together, they give two of the best performances seen regionally this season. Mr. Cromer invites us into Macbeth's mind, where we witness the temptation, the flashes of conscience and, superbly, the megalomania. It radiates from him.

        Ms. Goldsmith, usually dressed in blood tones (more nice work from costume designer Kate Mitchell), creates a woman of great passion and no conscience.

        The supporting players vary in strength, but they don't stop this production from being a powerhouse. My only quibble — a gamut of contemporary male hairstyles is unworthy of a show that makes your teeth rattle.

        Macbeth, through Feb. 17, Human Race, The Loft Theatre, Metropolitan Arts Building, 126 N. Main, Dayton. (937) 228-3630.

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