‘Macbeth’ is the everyman’s tragedy. He lacks the nobility of Othello, the intellect of Hamlet, the authority of Lear. He is Shakespeare’s premonition of Tony Soprano – always in slightly above his head, struggling to catch up, resorting to horrific violence in a bid to assert himself over a fate he can’t quite master. For someone who orders the murder of children, it is extraordinary how sympathetic he is.

Though there is much that is awkward about Jimmy Fay’s production of Macbeth at the Abbey, Aidan Kelly captures this essential quality well. His Macbeth is a soldier more confident in battle than in conversation, a man of action bewildered by the escalating consequences his actions unleash. And when he pauses, belatedly, to reflect (“out, brief candle!”), he is riveting.

Macbeth should be the ideal Shakespearian play for Jimmy Fay – pacy and relentlessly violent, it plays to his great strength for combative physicality on stage.

So the fact that this production often sags perhaps says more about the circumstances of staging Shakespeare at the Abbey than it does about Fay: the verse speaking and the fight scenes, in particular, suggest that this production was badly short of rehearsal time (or that Irish actors are chronically weak in these areas).

The set and sound designs, too, seem poorly conceived and inconsistent, a sometimes grating mesh of medieval and modern.

Yet there is much to enjoy: Eileen Walsh’s ferocious Lady Macbeth; Karl Shiels’s battle-wearied Macduff; Andrea Irvine’s arresting Lady Macduff (providing a much-needed lesson in verse speaking); Paul Keogan’s noirish lighting.

This may be a production that grows into itself, or it may be that the Abbey is slowly growing a capacity for Shakespeare. Either way, it’s not there yet. But in the meantime, this is an enjoyable account of a great play.