TheatreguideLondon
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The TheatreguideLondon Review
Richard III
Old
Vic Theatre Summer 2011
This is museum Shakespeare. There is very little actually wrong with the production. It has a movie star at its centre, the rest of the cast is generally at least adequate, and there are some interesting directorial and design touches.
And it is almost totally lifeless.
This is the sort of production that confirms people's suspicions that the only reason to see Shakespeare is to watch a star, that anything a star does in Shakespeare is by definition Grand Acting, and that the rest is supposed to be dull and hard to follow.
(I can't help suspecting that director Sam Mendes and designer Tom Piper may share that last prejudice, since they project what amount to chapter titles before each scene, as if we needed them to keep up with the plot.)
Few among the supporting cast are able to create characters, so that even in modern dress there isn't much of a reality there – just a parade of people coming on, making speeches at each other, and dying off without us particularly caring.
Kevin Spacey's portrayal of Richard is almost entirely external – a bit of Uriah Heep grovelling here, a flash of anger there, and general shouting throughout, as if volume alone indicated passion or dedication.
What is particularly missing is Richard's mordant wit and delight in his own villainy, qualities you would have thought this particular actor could have brought to the role without difficulty, and qualities that could have brought the performance and the production alive more consistently.
Indeed, the absence is so striking that the only explanation is that actor and director deliberately chose to suppress any familiar Spacey-isms. So we end up with an actor of certain strengths not employing those strengths, and giving a generic performance a dozen lesser actors could have done.
There are a couple of exceptions, moments that hint at the special power we would have hoped Spacey would bring. In the middle of the otherwise uninteresting Lady Anne scene, Spacey twice lets loose some raw sexual energy that Annabel Scholey as Anne visibly wilts under, but they're instant flashes that you could miss if you blinked.
And in the later parallel scene with Queen Elizabeth, Hayden Gwynne is so strong that you can watch the actress forcing Spacey to raise his game to match her.
One self-indulgence Spacey does allow himself is treating the occasional modern-sounding line like an ad lib, for an easy laugh, and staging one whole scene as a projection on a large screen seems as much a sop to the actor's ego as anything else.
Hayden Gwynne is as impressive throughout as the barely-registering Annabel Scholey is not. Chuk Iwuji brings Buckingham alive as a very modern politician and spin doctor, and Maureen Anderman has strong moments as the Duchess.
Gemma Jones as Margaret is dressed as a bag lady and directed to be as over-the-top mad as Madame Arcati, but she fights past both handicaps to give frightening power to her curses. (One directorial innovation, bringing Margaret silently onstage to literally cross off each of Richard's victims as her curses are fulfilled, is an effective way of reminding us that Richard is the tool of larger forces.)
Along with the projections, Tom Piper's set has more doors than a French farce, a curiosity that resonates only when Margaret's silent score-keeping gives them the effect of progressively-filling coffins.
The production is sold out, and there is a long queue for returns each night. It would be nice if those who get in could win more for their efforts than this adequate-and-no-more-than-that production.
Gerald Berkowitz
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