Richard III (2023)

I caught the PBS recording of this Shakespeare in the Park production last year, but I didn’t get around to writing about it until now. Unfortunately, this is one that I think could’ve been better. Despite a compelling central performance and some interesting concepts, the production had a hard time sustaining my attention.

Richard, the Duke of Gloucester, is jealous of his brother King Edward IV and resentful of the brothers and nephews who block his own path to the throne. Through manipulation and murder, he schemes to seize the crown for himself.

Over the years, many an actor has adopted the trademark “hump and withered limb” look to play Richard, though some productions interpret his “deformity” in other ways. Here, Richard has no visible disability, but he’s the only Black member of his family, and there are enough references in the script to people being “fair” to highlight the contrast. Furthermore, with Danai Gurira as the lead, we see his toxic masculinity as portrayed by a woman.

Gurira’s casting was how the production caught my eye, and she’s definitely my favorite thing about it. Her Richard is very mercurial, by turns charming, conniving, and scheming. She’s great to watch and a really interesting take on the character.

I also like that, while Richard isn’t visibly disabled, numerous other members of the cast are, including Tony winner Ali Stroker as Lady Anne. It also includes a few Deaf cast members who perform in ASL, which is sometimes interpreted by other characters onstage and sometimes subtitled.

But while Gurira is terrific and I like the inclusive casting, the production drags for me. To be fair, it’s been a number of years since I read Richard III, which can make watching the play more difficult. That said, a great production can easily make me feel the dialogue without a recent read, and I don’t think this one always rises to the occasion. The direction doesn’t do much to help the actors along, and with a lot of characters, it can be hard to keep track of everybody.

I’m still glad I watched it, but I think it could’ve been done better. The casting is so interesting and has a lot of potential, especially with Gurira’s strong performance as an anchor. For the actors’ sake, I wish the production had risen more to the occasion.

Warnings

Violence, sexual references, drinking, and thematic elements.

Julius Caesar (2018)

Back when this first aired in cinemas, I had a plan to see it. I was really excited, because I love Ben Whishaw and Richard II taught me that he’s an actor who can perform beautifully. But the closest theater showing it was 60 miles away, and a massive snowstorm hit on the one Saturday it was playing, so I missed it. But that’s the beauty of National Theatre Live having their own streaming service now. I don’t need to be limited to one particular day/time, I don’t need to drive for over an hour, and I don’t need to depend on the weather. It’s just there for when I want to see it!

Caesar is beloved by the people, but he’s poised to become a tyrant. One of his senators, Cassius, conspires to assassinate Caesar before that can happen, and she draws many others into the plot. She especially courts Caesar’s friend Brutus, who wrestles between loyalty to his friend and his duty to protect his country.

I’ll speak a little to the production on the whole, then move on to the acting, which is the focal point of most Shakespeare productions. Though filmed for National Theatre Live, this is an instance where the play was actually mounted at a different London theatre: the Bridge, which also put on the excellent production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream that I reviewed a while back. As with A Midsummer Night’s Dream, it’s performed in the round with audience members standing on the floor around the raised-up stage. The style is contemporary, which is always a little bit tricky when you get into the history plays—does it make sense that the conspirators could bring guns into the Senate without being caught? Does it even make sense that the politicians would be doing the killing themselves? Probably not, but that’s just par for the course when you’re presenting a Shakespeare play in this manner: go for a modern-looking semi-police state and trust that the audience will stick with it even if it veers from contemporary reality.

Onto the performances! As you probably noted from the plot summary, Cassius is a woman in this production, played by Michelle Fairley, a.k.a. Catelyn Stark. She brings her usual ferocity to the role but moderated, simmering under the seductive manipulation that Cassius more commonly employs. Ben Whishaw is of course excellent as Brutus, a mild-mannered pubic figure who shies away from being at the center of plot but who is increasingly pulled in to what Cassius is urging him toward. David Morrissey, who I still remember best from State of Play, is effective as Marc Antony. The play also features Adjoh Andoh (Martha’s mom from Doctor Who) as Casca, and Kit Young (Jesper!!) as Octavius. Side note: Young was in the Bridge’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream as well, playing Lysander, so that’s fun. Also, he plays a couple other minor roles in addition to Octavius here, appearing variously as a Roman citizen and one of Caesar’s guards. Obviously, this is something that plays do all the time, particularly big productions of Shakespeare plays, but it’s not often that I specifically recognize one of those ensemble members playing multiple small roles. I enjoy seeing the work Young does to feel like three different characters, even though all of them have limited stage time.

Warnings

Violence and strong thematic elements.

Exploring House of Cards Through Richard III

 

Though I finished and reviewed Richard III not long ago, I didn’t get around to comparing it with House of Cards as I’d planned.  Until now!  Having read one and watched the other, the common threads between the two stories are clear, especially between the two main characters.

 

Both Richard and Frank have the whole “smartest, sneakiest guy in the room” thing going on, further accentuated by their frequent asides to elaborate on their plans or scorn the stupidity of others.  Obviously, both have their eye on the highest seat in the land and have no qualms about how they attain it.  Plus, it’s not a simple matter of taking out one person – there’s an entire series of hoops to jump through, which requires a complex, multifaceted plan of carefully-balanced wheels within wheels.

 

I had to stop and think for a moment about Richard; though he, like Frank, is certainly fond of intricate manipulations that usually end which his victim destroying themselves, that’s largely his weapon of choice in his own play.  Earlier in the tetrad, he’s much more overt in his takedown of his opponents.  He’s openly hostile, relishing in battle and personally killing a number of his enemies.  I realize, though, that someone needs different tactics for destroying their own family from within than for crushing an acknowledged foe.  There’s no real call for Richard to play nice with the Lancasters, but he’s part of the house of York.  He lives among the people who are in his way – brothers, nephews, and so on – and can’t afford to just commence with the bloodshed.  So, he gets clever and underhanded, instead playing them all like chess.

 

In a way, I suppose Frank is the same.  He can be more openly combative against the Republicans because they’re the opposing party (though he still has to conceal his less legal activities,) and the Democrats enjoy reaping the benefits of his mercenary methods.  However, when he’s gunning for the people above him in his own party, he has to do it subtly.  He has to nurture their trust, isolate them from all voices but his, and gradually undermine them until they’re backed into a corner and can’t escape.

 

Not that the two characters are entirely the same.  There’s Frank’s wife Claire, a partner in Frank’s aims as he is in hers, and the sense of warped vindication that plays a role in Frank’s desire, not just to supplant President Walker, but to eviscerate him.  The biggest difference to me, though, is Richard’s much-talked-of physical deformity.  Throughout his play and the ones preceding it, other characters mock his “monstrous” appearance and cite it as proof of his internal blackness.  Frank, on the other hand, looks every bit the politician.  There’s nothing readily apparent about him that people sneer at.  I almost wonder if future episodes will use his bi-(or possibly homo-)sexuality to touch on this angle.  It’s not visible or evident, but that’s more the political game of today, isn’t it:  secret scandals coming to light and eroding a public figure’s foundation.  It might be an interesting way to go, especially since the show really doesn’t vilify Frank’s sexuality (which definitely relieves me) – there are plenty of other reasons to vilify him.  If anything, his scenes of same-sex attraction seem more honest and less opportunistic than his scenes of opposite-sex attraction and take tiny steps toward humanizing him.  For someone to try and use it against him would be much like people disparaging Richard for physical conditions over which he has no control.  I can’t decide if it’d be obvious, irritating, or intriguing, but I’m curious about the idea.  Sigh… how many months until season 3?

Richard III (circa 1592)

My self-assigned summer reading list included a tetrad of Shakespeare histories, all of which come to a head in this famous play.  I’m glad to have finally read it – with Shakespeare, it’s definitely a case of “so many plays, so little time.”  While I don’t find it as astonishingly well-written as my favorites of his, it’s a fine play about a fascinating character.

Reading through of the first 75% of the tetrad, the three Henry VI plays, I was surprised that Richard appears at the end of part 2 and takes a significant supporting role in part 3.  Richard III is so well-known, but I hardly ever hear people mentioning the Henry VI plays, so it’s strange to think of it as a conclusion to a larger story.  But now, having read all four plays in succession, I can’t quite imagine knowing it out of context.  Although it’s clearly the best-written of the four, the play itself exists best in conjunction with the other three.  (It helps to have read the Hollow Crown tetrad as well, written later but set earlier.  There are a handful of references to people and events from these plays that I wouldn’t have gotten otherwise.  This is what happens when you’re not up on your medieval English history – you have rely on what Shakespeare tells you.)

Anyway, Richard III is the story of how Richard, the deformed, duplicitous Duke of Gloucester, contrives against those standing between him and the crown, including his older brother and his young nephews.  A self-proclaimed villain, there’s nothing Richard won’t do to advance his aims.  His utter lack of compunction served his family well in the earlier plays, when his House of York wrestled the crown from the House of Lancaster and his oldest brother became king – he gladly got his hands dirty to further the cause of York.  Now, though, that same ambition has turned his own flesh and blood into enemies, and Richard isn’t an enemy you want to have.

It’s interesting to look at Richard from our modern viewpoint.  Where Shakespeare says “villain,” we would probably say “psychopath,” and indeed, many hallmarks of psychopathy are present and specifically acknowledged within his character.  He has no sense of remorse or empathy, and he views people as inconsequential pawns he uses for his purpose.  Though he’s not emotional (in earlier plays, he’s the only one not to weep when members of his family are killed,) he’s skilled at mimicking the requisite feelings and is a master manipulator who plays just about everybody. 

As far as the text goes, it’s rich with excellent lines.  Many of them come from Richard himself:  the dark dramatic irony in his deceptions, the hungry vigor in his soliloquies, and the scathing aspersions hiding under his barely-feigned niceties.  My biggest shock, quote-wise, comes at the very start, in line 1.  I honestly had to laugh when I discovered that “Now is the winter of our discontent” is immediately followed by “…Made glorious summer by this sun of York; / And all the clouds that lour’d upon our house / In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.”  So basically, everything is awesome and everyone who’s ever cribbed this quote is saying the exact opposite of this speech?  Yeah, sounds about right.

Warnings

Lots of heinous acts of villainy, a fair amount of violence (including murder and battle scenes,) and plenty of Elizabethan innuendos.