Richard III

Play by William Shakespeare
Propeller Theatre Company
At The Huntington Theatre Company
Boston University Theatre
Boston, MA

Directed by Edward Hall
Designed by Micahel Pavelka

May 18 – June 19, 2011

With Richard Clothier (Richard III), John Dougall (George, Duke of Clarence, Lord Stanley), Robert Hands (King Edward IV, Earl of Richmond), Dominic Tighe (Queen Elizabeth), Kelsey Brookfield (Lord Rivers), Thomas Padden (Lord Hastings, Duke of Norfolk), Dugald Bruce-Lockhart (Sir Richard Ratcliffe), Jon Trenchard (Lady Anne), Chris Myles (Duke of Buckingham), Tony Bell (Queen Margaret), David Newman (Sir William Catesby), Sam Swainsbury (Murderer, Edward Prince of Wales), Richard Frame (Murderer, Richard Duke of York), Kelsey Brookfield (Duchess of York), Wayne Cater (Bishop of Ely).

William Hogarth, David Garrick as Richard III (detail), 1765

A compulsive and menacing ambition drives a royal hunchback to kill everyone in sight in order to gain the throne. Women and children are not to be spared. He succeeds, but pays a price in the end.

The plot is more complicated, but it does boil down to this basic theme. The success of any rendering of it depends upon a portrayal of the power-hungry protagonist done with enough curiosity to invite the viewer inside his madness, rather than merely encouraging judgment of it from without.

The Propeller production is riveting.

Richard Clothier portrays Richard with an intensity that starts on a simmer and builds to hysteric proportions, delivering a completely believable portrayal of a megalomaniac sociopath. His demeanor, other than hunchbacked and limping, is quite regal, which adds dimension to the portrayal. He is not depicted as a gnomish character, as is sometimes done, but as a kingly one who has been psychologically derailed by his deformity. It is a clever and adroit choice.

The company does wonderful singing, providing hypnotic, tonal support throughout. They are musically refined, making it a truly excellent enhancement.

The staging is cleverly done – not high-tech, but economical and very persuasive. There are funny, macabre touches involving all the different methods Richard uses to execute his bountiful numbers of victims. The most memorable is a chain saw – actually fired up – then run behind a backlit curtain which shows blood plentifully squirted onto it.

Propeller is an all male company. In The Comedy of Errors (playing in repertory at the Huntington with Richard III), the male actors in female roles take up varying degrees of cross-dressing, some quite thoroughly. In Richard III, the actors don dresses, but don’t otherwise disguise their maleness, other than with modulated voices. And, it is striking, in this weighty dramatic context, how compelling these undisguised men are in women’s roles.

It is also compelling to see the uproarious cast from The Comedy of Errors (which I had seen the previous night) transformed into tragedians. They pulled off the hysterical atmosphere of The Comedy of Errors with large-scale devil-may-care enthusiasm. Here, in Richard III, they set a dark and compelling mood with equal conviction. In both cases, there is a constancy to the dynamism on stage that carries the tone throughout, and it is a real achievement.

It is nice to see the Huntington bring in an over-the-top troupe like Propeller for its season finale. The Huntington has produced many good shows over the years, to be sure, but there has been an overall tendency to be a bit hesitant about experimentation. Propeller represents a departure from that hesitation. Its seriousness about Shakespeare, with an equal seriousness about doing it with a gusto for the unexpected, is exactly what the Huntington needs.

– BADMan