Shakespeare purists might balk at Stephen Wrentmore’s revisioning of “Macbeth” for Arizona Theatre Company as a tale of 1930s fascism, told with a big-budget and high-tech accoutrements, but fans of engaging stories told in moody style will be right at home with this sharp production.

A tone of delicious dread is set from the opening scene: One of the play’s three soothsayer witches (played by the commanding Maren Maclean) picks up a wounded soldier on the battlefield and, grabbing him like a macabre bloody puppet, uses him to sing the praises of war hero Macbeth to King Duncan. Her message delivered, the witch drops the soldier to the ground and snaps his neck.

Thus begins Shakespeare’s well-known tragedy of cruel ambition, in which Macbeth and his wife murder their way to the throne before paranoia proves their undoing.

But Wrentmore offers a bold twist, casting the witches across ensemble roles — from assassins to advisers — as master manipulators of Macbeth’s fate, campaign managers, paparazzi and publicity.

It’s meant as Wrentmore’s indictment of the media, just as the director’s emphasis on newly kinged Macbeth’s paranoid launch into war in the second half of the play serves as thinly veiled polemic against the current Bush administration.

Wrentmore brilliantly succeeds in a show that could have fallen on its overambitious face. Scott Weldin’s daring set design — placing the play on the hilt and broken blade of a dagger — is a similar triumph.

It helps that this “Macbeth” boasts talented actors, including the Valley’s Maclean and Richard Trujillo (as Macduff). Kudos to Phoenix expatriate Matt Loney as Macbeth and Celeste Ciulla as a delicious, sexy, explosive Lady Macbeth.

This “Macbeth” is faulted only by its use of projected video, which sometimes comes off as cheesy and effects-heavy — too modern for an otherwise noirish, weirdly wonderful show.