There is always a choice when staging Shakespeare's "Macbeth." It is a violent, bloody play about the usurpation of power and its personal, political and cosmic consequences. A director can emphasize the muscular action or delve into psychology. Trying to do both rarely works.

OSF's new production, opening the 2009 season, goes for the visceral and it works splendidly. The staging is spare and jagged, the violence graphic, the pacing swift. Director Gale Edwards has presented a Scotland that is primitive, volatile and strongly connected to the supernatural.

The cascading consequences of "Macbeth" are, in fact, no different from the consequences of any power grab, whether a political coup, mafia infighting or a drug cartel turf war. First you co-opt or eliminate the inconvenient witnesses, then you eliminate your potential rivals. That the bloody violence only escalates is a given.

Here, Peter Macon's Macbeth is a straightforward warrior. As he strides across the stage in battle dress, his sword at the ready, director Edwards immediately places him in direct contrast with the rather more effete and polished king, Duncan.

Now Duncan may well have been an ambitious, calculating warrior lord before ascending to the throne, as James Peck's portrayal strongly suggests. Shakespeare's depiction of Scottish society does not give a sense of its having an orderly dynastic or political succession — as, in fact, it did not.

(Shakespeare and his audience saw the Scots as rather barbaric — notwithstanding that England's then king, James I, was a Scot, although also descended from the English Tudors through his maternal grandmother, who was Henry VIII's sister.)

So, when the witches, those three "weird sisters," appear to Macbeth and Banquo, after the battle that vanquishes Duncan's enemies, and predict that Macbeth will become king, they only confirm a possibility that is very real and attainable. In fact, it is pretty clear that Lady Macbeth (Robin Goodrin Nordli) has been thinking about this for a long time.

Everything about this production is virtually larger than life. Scenic designer Scott Bradley has created a set that is part battlefield, part disintegrating castle, with a broad ramp crossing high above the stage, ending in a curving, eroding but still-delicate staircase. Everything in this world is in decay, in chaos, with the horrific supernatural gnawing at its edges. The "weird sisters" here are positively demonic, a theme carried through in the cauldron scene in which the witches summon apparitions — with special effects that left the audience gasping. Birnam Wood comes to Dunsinane in a way entirely consistent with Shakespeare's words but with some spectacularly original props.

Costume designer Murrell Horton carries this through. The "warriors" wear everything from camouflage to armor. Royalty wear exquisitely tailored uniforms and polished riding boots. Lady Macbeth, with the exception of the mad scene, is always dressed in opulent red gowns. The witches, with their elaborately and demonically coiffed hair, stark make-up and heavy, voluminous costumes are truly figures for a nightmare.

Peter Macon and Robin Goodrin Nordli are a perfectly matched, perfectly calibrated Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. Lady Macbeth's energy is the driving force behind her husband's ambition. Here, Nordli emphasizes that edge of exasperation, of frustration at being the organizer rather than the active participant. Macbeth's vision of Banquo's ghost and Lady Macbeth's madness here are less signs of remorse than they are realizations of the unforeseen consequences of usurpation.

Kevin Kenerly's McDuff has a fuller character arc than the other characters. He commences as Macbeth's stalwart comrade, begins to have doubts when Duncan is mysteriously assassinated, underestimates Macbeth as an enemy and believably fuels his revenge from his deeply felt grief after Macbeth has killed his family. Kenerly manages to go through this wide range of emotion without exaggeration or loss of control. It's a delicate balance and he's pulled it off.

Director Edwards says that she sees the dominant theme of the play as equivocation — ambiguity, "doubleness" — dissembling and dishonesty. I'm not sure that she has achieved that here. If anything, this "Macbeth" is a rougher, more straightforward "Macbeth" than we usually see, without subtexts or sublimations. Here, Macbeth and his lady are not in a moral crisis. They have followed their ambition and as the fatal consequences of their acts become clear, fear takes over.

It may not be the message that Edwards had in mind, but it is an effective one, nonetheless.