DramaLondonReview

Richard III – Rose Theatre, Kingston

Reviewer: Jane Darcy

Writer: William Shakespeare

Director: Adjoa Andoh

Adjoa Andoh directs and stars in this production of Richard III. It’s a very personal project for Andoh, who writes about growing up always feeling an outsider, ‘being judged by what I looked like, rather than who I was’. Learning about Richard III as a child, she says, she ‘felt a kinship’ with this fellow outsider. Here, therefore, she makes the bold move of showing Richard not as differently-abled but Black.

Shakespeare moves the action rapidly through a range of locations, from the Tower of London to remote castles and battlefields, ending, of course, on Bosworth Field. Amelia Jane Hankin’s set, however, reflects Andoh’s vision, remaining statically in the Cotswold countryside of her childhood. The play opens with a scene of an idealised pastoral. There is birdsong, warm light, trees and a maypole about which the cast performs a Morris dance. Andoh uses this to show how things turn sour for Richard. No longer a victorious soldier, his men mock him, using the maypole ribbons to truss him up. But the image just isn’t strong enough to represent Richard’s profound scars at feeling ‘deformed, unfinished … scarce half made up’, a figure ‘so lamely and unfashionable/ That dogs back at me as I halt by them.’

The idea that instead it is Richard’s ethnicity which sets him as an outsider is puzzling in a historical drama where everyone’s lineage is well known and seems irrelevant. Then the idea, unsupported by the text, simply fizzles out. As director, Andoh’s choice of rural accents for most of the characters suggests we’re watching one of Shakespeare’s festive comedies, not a tense history play set at a time of national crisis.

Andoh herself is never less than mesmerizing on stage, but her interpretation of Richard III is hard to understand. She plays him as a sort of Jerusalem‘s Rooster Byron, energetic, mischievous, delighting in his power over others. If Andoh is seeking to rehabilitate the historic figure, her essentially comic take removes the more fascinating spectacle of Richard’s Machiavellian darkness.

Maybelle Laye’s costume design which puts all the characters in a shalwar kameez makes it hard to distinguish Shakespeare’s large cast of powerful men. The female characters are more sharply delineated with uniformly powerful performances from Liz Kettle (Queen Margaret), Caroline Parker (Elizabeth, Duchess of York), Rachel Sanders (Elizabeth Woodville) and Phoebe Shepherd (Lady Anne). A late scene between them is one of the stand-out moments of the production.

It is really hard to make sense of the overall tone. There are heavy handed depictions of what should be chilling curses, accompanied by crashes of thunder and over-stated spotlighting. In contrast twinkly music and merry songs (Yeofi Andoh) contribute to the overall light-heartedness of this baffling show. Parts of the production draw on the language of animated folk tales – brutal murders are enacted in eerie shadow play and for no apparent reason, the younger of the two princes condemned to the the tower is represented by a puppet, a laborious contrivance which further detaches the audience from what should be the horror of Richard’s tyrannic rise to power.

Andoh has spoken about wanting Richard III to be accessible to a wide audience. It’s a long and complex play at the best of times, and to be honest, anyone who has never seen it before is likely to be baffled.

Runs until 13 May 2023

The Reviews Hub Score

Baffling

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The Reviews Hub London is under the acting editorship of Richard Maguire. The Reviews Hub was set up in 2007. Our mission is to provide the most in-depth, nationwide arts coverage online.

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