A curious feature of Shakespeare’s Richard III — unmentioned in the programme for Stratford’s gripping new production — is that its longer (though still not complete) title is The Tragedy of Richard III. Of course, it’s not so much a tragedy for him, who has gleefully embraced villainy and reaps the whirlwind that results, but for almost everybody who crosses his path.
But the word is very useful for reminding us of the essential staginess of the piece — that this is a play in which the malevolent monarch has chosen to cast himself as the baddie. Another, perhaps more preferable, role — that of stage lover — has been ruled out owing to his physical deformities, as he tells us in the famous opening soliloquy.
This is here delivered in grandiloquent style by Jonjo O’Neill, to the stirring accompaniment of Nick Powell’s music, its martial tone emphasised by the pinpoint accuracy of Chris Seddon’s soaring trumpet.
But in an astonishing demonstration of the ‘pulling power’ he has denied, we then see the seduction of Lady Anne (Pippa Nixon) — over the body of her father-in-law, Henry VI, Richard’s most recent victim. In Roxana Silbert’s well-managed production, the smirking monster pulls aside two of the gentlemen bearing away the coffin to ask: “Was ever woman in this humour wooed?”
Confident, charismatic, with a consummate actor’s ability to feign whatever emotion is required, O’Neill’s Richard is at times an oddly endearing, often highly comic, villain. After Jonathan Slinger’s terrifying Crookback of 2007 and the gap-toothed grotesque of Henry Goodman for the RSC four years earlier, this makes an interesting change.
Brian Ferguson, distractingly reminiscent of Slinger in looks, gives a fine account of his sidekick Buckingham, another talented thesp. His Scottish tones are heard at their most wheedlingly persuasive in the scene in which Richard fakes piety, flanked by two bishops, to ‘refuse’ (ho-ho) the crown being proffered by the people. His throwing away of the Bible once its purpose has been served is a brilliant touch.
Edmund Kingsley’s exceptionally well-spoken Clarence and John Stahl’s Hastings — for all his political skills never a match for the scheming Richard — are other fine features of the production.
Among the play’s chorus of queens, Paola Dionisotti’s Margaret stands out (as usual) for her never-ending curses. As the old crone goes on one feels like shouting “Oh, do give over, love!” — as Frankie Howerd’s Lurcius used to in Up Pompeii! to Senna the Soothsayer.
Until September 15. 0844 800 1110. (www.rsc.org.uk)
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