Mr. Cumming, a Tony winner for “Cabaret” who currently appears as a canny political operative on the terrific television drama “The Good Wife,” is a versatile performer who here gets to indulge in the kind of high-hurdle challenge (or ego trip) that can prove irresistible to actors. He is also a born entertainer, who recently appeared with Liza Minnelli in a concert engagement at Town Hall. (Like many a celebrity in this era of all-platform saturation, Mr. Cumming also has his own line of fragrances.)

Watching him perform this personalized rendition of “Macbeth,” I was at times more intrigued by the battle going on between the serious actor and the shameless entertainer than I was by the tense struggles taking place in the divided mind of Macbeth, a noble warrior who knows that killing his king is an evil act, or by the scenes of seething conflict between Macbeth and his more ruthless wife, given a voluptuous sexual manipulativeness by Mr. Cumming.

Some choices made by Mr. Cumming and his directors, John Tiffany (“Black Watch,” “Once”) and Andrew Goldberg, tend to chase away the shadows in this corrosively dark drama. (However, the one passage of authentic comic relief, the sodden porter’s scene, is eliminated.) King Duncan is portrayed as a dizzy fop, speaking in fluty tones that make him seem like a featherweight leader whose dispatching might well be good for the country — an interpretation at odds with his depiction in the text as the generous, responsible antithesis of the ruler that Macbeth will become. Duncan’s son Malcolm, whose status as the king’s heir places him firmly in Macbeth’s cross hairs, is represented by an eerie-looking doll in a dingy dress, and Mr. Cumming uses a childish squeak to speak his few lines. With his innocent victims thus represented, Macbeth’s brutal acts are somewhat denuded of their malevolence. (The use of a child’s tiny sweater, symbolizing one of Macduff’s doomed sons, strikes a more haunting note.)

Macbeth himself evinces a mordant sense of humor now and then. After Macduff’s description of the disturbances in nature that took place during the night of Duncan’s murder — the “lamentings heard i’ the air” and “strange screams of death” — Mr. Cumming’s Macbeth says with a shrug, “ ’Twas a rough night,” eliciting peals of laughter from the audience. Hearing from one of the murderers he has hired that Banquo lies dead in a ditch, with 20 gashes in his head, Mr. Cumming uses the same offhand tone to reply, “Thanks for that.” More laughter.