Something Wiccan this way comes in Zinnie Harris’s fascinating new update on Shakespeare’s bloody Scottish play. Macbeth (An Undoing), which opened Thursday at Brooklyn’s Theatre for a New Audience shifts the focus of the tragedy to the play’s women — from the weird sisters so often portrayed as cackling witches to that ultimate antiheroine Lady Macbeth whose abrupt transition from ambitious homicide whisperer to simpering spotophobe is never fully explained in the Bard’s original text.

Zinnie, who also directs the production with much of the same cast that premiered the show at Scotland’s Royal Lyceum Edinburgh last year, offers a corrective that lifts whole chunks of the original text while adding plenty of modern (and meta) flourishes. Not only does she want us to reconsider this oft-told tragedy, but she challenges us to ponder why we’re so drawn to the story in the first place. The wry Liz Kettle kicks off the show with a monologue directly to the audience, promising a barebones version of a familiar yarn. “You’ll get what you paid for!” she says. “No merry ending for you.”

Despite Kettle teasing a show free of pyrotechnics, the physical production is simple but strong. Stage fog appears regularly on Tom Piper’s set, which is dominated by shifting mirrored walls to create new spaces both in and out of Macbeth’s castle. Alex Berry’s costumes have a 1920s vibe, either flapperish for the ladies or military with a WWI nod for the men (a period choice echoed in the play’s occasional references to bullets).

The first act hews fairly closely to Shakespeare’s original, with a few noteworthy departures. The childless social climber Lady Macbeth (Nicole Cooper) is presented in direct contrast with Lady Macduff (Emmanuella Cole), who arrives at the royal feast at Castle Macbeth visibly pregnant and secretly cavorting with Banquo (James Robinson). Before long, both Banquo and King Duncan (a blustery Marc Mackinnon) meet their fate at the hands of the newly promoted war hero Macbeth (Adam Best), a charming guy’s guy who easily falls under the sway of his much more ambitious wife.

But in this version, the ultimate power couple’s roles are reversed after the key murders take place. It’s Macbeth who drowns in remorse, seeking in vain to scrub clean his bloody conscience and get out, out those damned spots. It’s a clever twist, and it makes sense for a man who’s told he will sleep no more to lose all grip on reality and give in to his delusions. Meanwhile, the wife who stiffened her husband’s resolve to act decisively and homicidally now assumes command of the kingdom — even though the royal court address her as “Sirrah.” “These men already cannot see me as a woman,” she explains, “their eyes are so accustomed to the male form as leader.”

In the confusing second act, Zinnie doubles back on her premise — shattering the fourth wall in ways that are flashy but distracting. After floating some interesting ideas, she seems to lose her nerve, unsure how to follow through on her ambitions or consistently summon language that stands up to Shakespeare’s original.

But Cooper is as charismatic as her character is quixotic, a riveting onstage presence as she grapples with the felonious path she has chosen for her and her husband to assume power — and how the consequences for her are even weightier given her gender. In Zinnie’s telling, the weird sisters are not witches but local women to whom Lady M has turned for childbirth advice — before losing yet another baby and depriving Macbeth of heirs. She realizes all too well that it is her burden to not only justify their brutal pursuit of the throne but to enable it to last for generations past their deaths. What is worse, she comes to understand that the man in her life is not worthy of all her carefully wrought scheming on his behalf. He should have died hereafter.