Reimagining Richard

Yesterday, I mentioned the 1993 film version of Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing. Today, I want to write about the film version of Richard III that came out two years later.

Ian McKellen had starred in a stage production directed by Richard Eyre that reimagined the chronicle play as taking place in Fascist-era Europe. The idea was to create a parallel reality in which Britain had gone the way of Germany and Italy and embraced totalitarianism. The concept worked.

McKellen himself wrote the screenplay, with help from the film's director, Richard Loncraine. It doesn't so much adapt Shakespeare's play as put it in a blender and turn it into a delicious new concoction. Scenes are rearranged, lines attributed to new characters, and completely new contexts created that will shock and amuse those familiar with the play.

I remember how when I was in college, I came into New York City to see the film at a discount movie theatre complex (now New World Stages). After the opening sequence in which Richard kills the former Prince of Wales and King Henry VI, we see a celebration for King Edward, complete with gorgeous 1930s-era ball gowns, a big band, and the vocalist Stacey Kent singing... there was a wave of laughter that came over the audience as people recognized what it was!

One of the more interesting (and appropriate) choices was to make Edward's queen and her family Americans. At first, I was skeptical of what seemed like a ploy to attract mainstream audiences with Hollywood stars like Annette Bening and Robert Downey, Jr., but the idea works. Elizabeth Woodville, who married Edward IV, was an outsider, a widow of one of Edward's opponents who did not come from royal stock. Making her family Americans makes sense.

The film also makes great use of unexpected locations. The ballroom scene was actually filmed in St. Cuthbert's Church in London. (The pillars are quite striking.) The bathroom of that fictitious ballroom, however, was actually the Holbein Room at Strawberry Hill! The real Tower of London seemed too familiar to be used as the Tower in the world of the film, so instead the Tower scenes were shot in gritty, industrial buildings.

If you've never seen the movie, definitely take a look. It's well worth viewing.

Richard III in New Jersey

Last night I saw the Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey's wonderful production of Richard III in Madison, New Jersey.

Derek Wilson plays the famous crookback in this production, and Ames Adamson, who recently played the title role in Butler off-Broadway, is a sympathetic Lord Hastings, betrayed by Richard when he least expects it.

I think my favorite performance, however, was that of Gretchen Hall, who plays Queen Elizabeth, the unfortunate wife of Edward IV. This is the same role Annette Bening played in the film version with Ian McKellen. While Bening plays Elizabeth as a complete outsider in the court, Hall makes her much more crafty, much more at home with the intrigues around her, which makes her fall all the more terrifying.

In one particularly memorable scene, Richard climbs on top of Anne, menacing her physically and sexually as well as psychologically. The ordeal is horrifying to watch, and ensures we have very little sympathy for Richard when Richmond declares "the bloody dog is dead" at the end.

Like the company's production of Coriolanus this summer, Richard III is well executed. (Pardon the pun.) If you want to see it, the show is running until November 6th.

Lear in the Park

Last night, I had the good fortune of seeing The Public Theater's production of King Lear at the Delacorte in Central Park.

Watching the play, I was struck by how the politics of King Lear oddly parallel post-Bush America. Lear, like the American people, was taken in by a couple of smooth talkers, and then proceeded to turn on anyone who tried to offer sound advice. His disowning of Cordelia is no more irrational than the ire poured out on politicians who didn't wear flag lapel pins, or the venom unleashed on France (whose king also makes an appearance in Lear) when that country declined to endorse a fool-hardy invasion of Iraq.

Kent is banished for his sound advice, accused of not just of being un-patriotic, but of committing treason (one of Ann Coulter's favorite terms). The only person allowed to speak the truth is the fool, an entertainer who--like Janeane Garofalo--must stand up and state the plain simple facts, because if he doesn't, no one else will.

Could the plethora of Lear productions of late come from a new, more sympathetic understanding of the title character? Perhaps, have rushed headlong into a disaster many people warned us against, after having thrown off our friends with irrational hatred (Freedom Fries?), we are more likely to feel for an old fool who did the same thing.

But enough with political musings. How was the show?

Great. As I sat down and looked at the bizarrely textured back wall of the set, designed by John Lee Beatty, I had my doubts. However, the way that wall was lit by lighting designer Jeff Croiter, with projections by video designer Tal Yarden, was nothing less than amazing. Moving bridges, live torches, and huge, sheet-like percussion instruments also come together to create a performance space that is perfect for director Daniel Sullivan's production.

John Lithgow is wonderful as Lear, convincingly appearing frail and infirm, in spite of a marathon performance that proves the actor to be far from either. And yes, this is a marathon. Clocking in at nearly three and a half hours, the production is considerably longer than the "two hours' traffic" the play would have been in Shakespeare's time. (For some reasons why modern productions tend to be longer, see my previous post on the construction of composite texts.)

Lithgow is at his best when he portrays Lear's slow recovery from madness. He plays the king as if he were someone we might know and love, but who is suffering from dementia. He knows he isn't in his right mind, and that he has wronged those who loved him most, but there is now nothing he can do other than to apologize for his state and to beg for forgiveness, something the king does pitifully.

Annette Bening, in reality only twelve years younger than Lithgow, plays Goneril with youth and vigor. I preferred Jessica Hecht, as Regan, though. Every move her body makes, every tremble of her voice, conveys a personality that's just a little unbalanced. She doesn't appear crazy, but just a little off--enough, however that when she starts screaming sadistically for men to be put into stocks or for eyes to be gouged out, we aren't at all surprised she's capable of such things.

Christopher Innvar gives a surprisingly good performance as Regan's husband Albany. For the nerds out there who care about such things, this production tends to follow the quarto text, which gives Albany considerably more emphasis than the folio text does. (Again, you can go here if you're interested in the differences.) Albany even gets the last lines of the play, though almost every director tends to follow the folio in giving them to Edgar.

Chukwudi Iwuji is the actor who plays Edgar, and he is quite compelling when he feigns madness, taking on the disguise of Tom o' Bedlam. His scenes with his father, played by Clarke Peters, are also affecting, and Sullivan manages to stage the Dover cliff scene so it's actually believable. Public regular Jay O. Sanders is delightful as the honest Kent, and Steven Boyer is both disturbing and funny as the fool.

In spite of its excessive length, this production is definitely worth seeing, so grab a sleeping bag and wait in line, or try your luck at the with the Virtual Ticketing Lottery. Go soon, though, as more and more people will be trying to see it as word spreads.