It's a blood-and-guts Macbeth on stage at Cincinnati Shakespeare Festival, one that points an accusing finger at the chaos of our world through the rise and fall of the ambitious Scots warrior.

        Director Drew Fracher knows what he wants — to grab the audience by our throats and pull us up out of our comfort zone and into the chilling waking nightmare of a world gone mad. He succeeds so well that by the drama's end he's pulled the majority of the audience up out of their seats in a standing ovation.

        But he was so close to creating one of those never-forget productions that even as one applauds what is on the stage, one regrets what isn't.

        This is a Macbeth with a soulless vacuum where its center should be. Oh for an ambivalent Macbeth, torn between ambition and conscience. Oh, for a deliciously manipulative Lady Macbeth who doesn't discover her own conscience until it's too late.

        Neither Giles Davies or Anne Schilling is up to the complexities of their roles, although they both fall into near-mesmerizing madness in the second act.

        Macbeth is the Bard's non-stop action tragedy which moves full-throttle from the moment warrior hero Macbeth runs across a trio of very weird sisters and discovers that their prophecies make a very good excuse to allow latent, devastating ambitions to surface.

        It's a good fit for Mr. Fracher, whose expertise as a fight director and affinity for physical performing partners well with the festival company's energy.

        The production opens to air raid sirens and the rapid-fire ping-ping-ping of automatic weapons. In the background, soldier/terrorists round up the enemy and execute them on the street. In the foreground, a trio of crack addicts whisper sweet somethings in Macbeth's ear.

        You will be king, they tell him. What better reason to engage in a methodical bloodbath to assure the crown and a reign of terror?

        For the play to work as the tragedy it can and must be, Macbeth has to set foot on stage already conflicted. Mr. Davies doesn't embody that which could set a previously moral man on a disasterous course. Instead of being a villainess worthy of legend, Ms. Schilling comes across as a a nouveau riche shrew.

        So until the second act, Macbeth's many pleasures are to be found in everything else: in its testosterone; in Mr. Fracher's ability to scare the bejesus out of us and make us very glad we don't live in the police state he's created on stage; in his delight of John LeCarre Cold War overtones and back room political shenanigans;

        Of strong supporting performances from exactly where festival regulars will expect them: Brian Isaac Phillips, Nick Rose and Jeremy Dubin in a variety of roles; Corinne Mohlenhoff strung out and sexily trashed as the lead witch.

        R. Chris Reeder is distinguished as the doomed king, although he doesn't differentiate his other roles enough from Duncan, so much so that too often it seems like the dead king is haunting several scenes where he isn't supposed to be.

        Once the Macbeths shed the shackles of sanity, the second act plays like a rollercoaster ride, one with loops and tunnels that take you by surprise and steal your breath away.

        Ms. Schilling rises to the brief sleep-walking scene. Mr. Davies, who has a marvelous physicality, pitches himself into the witches' seductive drug dreams and careens spectacularly into madness.

        Macbeth will sweep you up with its visceral power. What it doesn't do is make this man's downfall matter.

        Macbeth, through Feb. 11, Cincinnati Shakespeare Festival, 719 Race St., 381-2273.

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