RICHARD III

RICHARD III

Shakespeare's Globe

21.07.12

Shakespeare's play, one of his earliest successes, has such a strong hold on the popular imagination that his hunchback, fascinatingly repulsive and ruthlessly ambitious, is now our stock image of this much-maligned monarch.

Mark Rylance, in a triumphant return to Shakespeare's Globe, effortlessly holds the stage in a fast-moving production by Tim Carroll. No-one knows better how to engage with the groundlings, and his trademark delivery – hesitant, natural, off-hand – suits most of the soliloquies and the asides. Shakespeare's Richard is shockingly honest, and there is a palpable frisson at some of the most outrageous lines.

Though this is dangerously close to being a one-man show, there is excellent support from some of the greatest Globe actors from the last ten years. Colin Hurley, ashen and asthmatic as the dying King, Peter Hamilton Dyer as Catesby, Liam Brennan outstanding as an imposing, and beautifully spoken, Clarence. And James Garnon, [who also gave us his Duchess of York] worth waiting for as the triumphant Henry VII.

This is an original practices production, with young men for the Queens, including a remarkable Queen Elizabeth from Sam Barnett, and none of the stage design excrescences that have marked directors' visions recently.

So more room in the yard for the mob, all too ready to laugh at the hunchback's asides and to cheer him on to kingship. But we were attentive, too, for some of the more intense moments: the dream before Bosworth, for instance, with its shrouded ghosts, who also returned to haunt the field of battle.

RICHARD III

Maldon Actors'Company at Promenade Park.

23.06.11

On Midsummer's Eve, the sun is setting behind St Mary's, and between the trees and the Blackwater, Shakespeare's hunch-back Gloucester once more proves a villain.

Barry Jaimeson's determinedly traditional production starred Dave Hawks as the bottled spider. In his first speech, he ran a goodly gamut of emotions, and held the broad stage whenever he appeared, genially confiding in the audience in his soliloquies.

“Is the chair empty ?” in Act IV was exceptionally well delivered, I thought, and his grisly pawing of Hasting's bloodily severed head was another memorable moment. But this was by no means a one-man-show; indeed, there were some very strong women, including Poppy Miller's prescient Margaret.

And sound “Shakespearean” performances, all the way down to the black-clad “erroneous vassals”, who later doubled as priests. There was a good deal of doubling: Michael How was Brackenbury as well as a delightfully vague Bishop of Ely, and John Peregrine, as Rivers, made a noble death in Pomfret, only to bounce back after the interval as the murderous Tyrell. A heroic young Richmond, heavily armoured for Bosworth Field, from Ben Markham, and an impressive Clarence from Kevin Jennings.

The pace was commendably tight; but this is a big space, and the entries around the back wall, strikingly good visually, did sometimes mean tardy overlaps between scenes. I liked the tents on the battlefield, and the voices of the dead in the darkness. The battle itself, though would have benefited from more noise.

As at Shakespeare's Globe, talk of “clouds” and “heaven”, seemed very real, and I appreciated being able to feast on strawberries [probably not from Ely's Hatton Garden beds] and a pint of Tricky Dicky, specially brewed for this show by Farmer's Ales, just up the road at King Richard's own Blue Boar.