In the deposition scene, when Richard broke his mirror, Bullingbrook placed the empty frame over the king’s head, creating a noose. At Pomfret, a ragged Richard unburdens his soul to the groom, who turns out to be Bullingbrook, eliciting sympathy for the variable fortunes of the two “kings” but to some critics straining the text too far.66 Michael Billington felt that Richardson’s king “ranks with Redgrave and McKellen as one of the classic Richards,”67 while J. C. Trewin observed that “Mr Pasco tastes every word as he moves from the contemptuous smiling sun-king, through the arias on the Welsh shore, to the agony of Westminster Hall and the ultimate time-spinning metaphysics at Pomfret.”68 However, Trewin’s final praise was reserved for Richardson as Bullingbrook: “no actor in my memory has so governed the ‘silent king’ of Westminster Hall.”
Terry Hands (1980)
Irving Wardle’s review of Richard II for the London Times catches the way in which the highly unusual “cycle” directed by Terry Hands was to position the play:
Having begun in the middle of the English histories with Henry V and worked outwards in both directions, Terry Hands now arrives simultaneously at the beginning and the end of the cycle with this production and tonight’s Richard III … we have a version of Richard II which converts the play from a lyric prelude into a compressed epic.69
The “cycle” opened a season in 1975 celebrating the centenary of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre from its beginnings as the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre. The “asymmetrical, even arbitrary” cycle, directed by Hands, comprised the Henriad in 1975, the Henry VI plays in 1977, with Richard II and Richard III completing the histories in 1980. Alan Howard played the lead role in all eight plays. Hands disregarded historical chronology and “opened out of sequence with Henry V in order to let the Chorus provide a prologue to the whole enterprise with his appeal to ‘imaginary puissance’ and ‘the brightest heaven of invention.’ ”70 Hands also revived his 1968 The Merry Wives of Windsor to round off the cycle, making a connection between “a jaundiced depiction of the condition of England,” emerging through the Henriad, and the “run-down England” which “was ripe for the reappearance of an enfeebled Falstaff.”71
The pairing of Richard II and Richard III in 1980 suggests a compression of time, projecting a retrospective light on King Richard II’s tenuous grasp of the political realities that will unseat him and unleash bitter power struggles for the throne in years to come. At the same time, the unlikely companion piece of Richard III offered “a chance of showing another actor-king.”72 Stuart Hampton-Reeves suggests that the productions were “a self-conscious challenge to the monumental histories of the 1960s. History was represented on a stage (designed by Farrah) which had been stripped to reveal the wood and brickwork of the theatre.”73
4. Terry Hands’ 1980 production: from affability to opportunism to “a haunted figure bent under the weight of a usurped kingdom.”
B. A. Young described the effects of the minimalist staging in Richard II:
As we begin, the King stands before a costly panel of gold inlay and dons his crown with a gesture that speaks wordlessly of his divine right. Later this panel inclines backward to give a big open stage to which men climb up unseen stairs upstage, sometimes to fine effect, as when the savage Welsh come, lit from behind, to learn that they are too late.74
Shaughnessy argues that Hands’ approach repudiates the politics in the Henriad and Henry VI plays, “concentrating upon the private self rather than the public role.”75 In his production of Richard II, Hands shows the protagonists responding personally to the pressures of their situations. Thus, as Irving Wardle notes,
The first thing to be said of Mr Howard’s performance is that he does Richard out of the arias. “What shall the king do now?” is delivered in a terrified gabble. He really wants to know. It is the panic-stricken demand of an actor who has forgotten his lines.76
Wardle notes that the emotional journey for John Suchet’s Bullingbrook moves from “an affable open-hearted invader” to “a coldly-masked opportunist” and, finally, “a haunted figure bent under the weight of a usurped kingdom.”
Barry Kyle (1986)
Barry Kyle’s production of Richard II opened with colorful medieval scenic splendor, announcing its distance from the harsh steel world of the history cycle, directed by Peter Hall and John Barton in 1963–64, and from the minimalist staging favored by Terry Hands (1975–80). As Margaret Shewring relates, “It was the stage picture for Barry Kyle’s production that attracted most column inches of critical attention.”77 However, “This visual feast was not gratuitous. On the contrary, it was an essential image of the cultural richness of the Ricardian court.”78 Other critics were less impressed:
Barry Kyle has adopted a pop-up picture book approach to this play and William Dudley’s set, steeped in the artificial world of “The Book of Hours,” is an enclosed garden surrounded by castellated walls and turrets against a brilliant, azure background with the passage of time marked by an astrological arch which spans the stage. It is an exquisite set which becomes increasingly irrelevant as the tragedy moves out of the claustrophobic luxuriance of Richard’s court to the reality of Bullingbrook’s camp, not to mention Pontefract Castle. At times it is seriously counter-productive: “Come down—down court, down King, / For night-owls shriek where mounting larks should sing” [3.3.183–4]. And sure enough, Richard goes spiralling downwards on a miniature turret, the very same turret that Bullingbrook leaps onto later—going up naturally.79
Stanley Wells also found the set “less than wholly successful” where “Richard, facing the audience, addresses his abdication speeches to Bullingbrook, who is seated above and behind him, through the back of his head,” but argued that the production represented “an honest and intelligent attempt to objectify the style of this highly formalized play.”80
5. Barry Kyle production, 1986. The “colourful medieval scenic splendour” of the set proved problematic for some, where “Richard, facing the audience, addresses his abdication speeches to Bolingbroke, who is seated above and behind him, through the back of his head.”
The play started with Jeremy Irons’ Richard
first discovered resplendent in peacock blue and gold, spread-eagled on the ground, the leopard encaged in his kingdom that will become his tomb. He looks up wearily, as if to say: I know I’m not playing the kingship game with the degree of seriousness everybody else expects of me.81
Without the context of a history cycle, the production can suggest an elegiac response to the ending of a medieval kingship. However, the “startlingly messianic” portrayal by Jeremy Irons of the tragic downfall of a divine king, a man “more or less crucified by his assailants,” is in fact “another aspect of the poseur.”82 Richard plays his role ineffectually and dangerously, misjudging the political climate. Critics were impressed with the ceremonial joust scene, “a public ritual whose essential meaning is obvious to everyone present and the actors brilliantly convey the sense of unspoken but thoroughly understood accusations,” and Michael Kitchen’s “mesmerising performance” as Bullingbrook, “a formidable figure: an unpleasant, unglamorous and devious man but one who simply radiates competence, shrewdness, and a cynical likeability.”83
Ron Daniels (1990)
While Jeremy Irons suggested the self-destructive path taken by the last undisputed medieval English king, Alex Jennings showed the repercussions of a tyrannical regime on the people subjected to his rule. Ron Daniels’ “stand-alone” production had a modern context: the world of realpolitik. The theater program included a double-page spread on tyrannical regimes throughout history with a printed quote across the centerfold in red: “Mussolini would have liked to have been a poet just as Hitler would have liked to have been a great painter—most dictators, it seems, are artists manqués.”84 Maria Jones describes the start of the performance:
The tyranny of Richard’s regime was suggested through his personal bodyguard, the Cheshire archers, who trained their crossbows on the a
udience … Sinister guards in greatcoats and fur helmets recalled East European guards and referenced the tyrannical regime in Romania under Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu who were executed in December 1989 … Richard (Alex Jennings) entered “magnificently attired,” wearing “the kind of crown a Holy Roman Emperor might have worn.” His divine authority was emphasized through the presence of the Bishop of Carlisle (John Bott) standing behind the throne in ceremonial robes and bishop’s mitre. Sinking “voluptuously into the throne,” Jennings portrayed a monarch “utterly entranced with the role, the power, the trappings of kingship.”85
The presence of a “false” white proscenium arch cast Richard as the “leading actor” of an illusory world and the production conveyed the idea that dictators appropriate images to produce distorted versions of reality, feeding off illusionary visions of themselves.86 A huge, extravagant baroque Guido Reni backdrop created an effect that mythologized Richard’s tragic downfall through the story of Atalanta stooping to retrieve Hippomene’s apples, creating “a pictorial analogue of Bullingbrook’s ascendancy, an image of victory through flight from a diverted opponent. Atalanta stoops just as Richard, the glistering phaeton, descends.”87 Richard appeared like a spoiled child, jealously guarding his favorite “toys,” the orb, scepter and crown, which he kept in his “toy-box” and that would later be carried into Westminster Hall. Michael Billington of the Guardian commented on “a highly exciting performance from Anton Lesser” who played Bullingbrook:
Willing to wound and yet afraid to strike, like certain modern politicians, Mr Lesser’s Bullingbrook exhibits a wonderful mixture of power-hunger and residual guilt: the classic moment comes with Richard’s ironic offer of “Here, cousin, seize the crown” when Mr Lesser instinctively backs off as if the diadem itself were charged with electricity.88
Jennings was praised as “a commanding presence throughout,” but some thought “the fascist/Stalinist touch in the production is a touch over-done” with “every character, save Richard, dressed in black.”89
Steven Pimlott (2000)
Steven Pimlott’s production of Richard II in the intimate studio space of The Other Place was the first in the RSC’s two-year project “This England: The Histories,” a “cycle” of all eight plays in chronological order for which “there would be no attempt to impose a single directorial or design concept.”90 Puzzled by the decision to choose different directors, designers, and venues, one critic asked: “Why stage a cycle if you plan an anti-cyclical style?”91 Another provided an answer: “This variety is in deference to the stylistic contrasts of the plays, but you can also see the fragmentation as a response to the devolving nature of Britain, and the evolving character of its monarchy.”92
Pimlott’s approach, it was suggested, “dramatically opened up Richard II to the present moment, and opened up the present moment to the play.”93 The permanent white-box set designed by Sue Willmington, with environment designed by David Fielding, released the actors to tell the story “in what was avowedly the same real time as that of the audience.” The spectator might be asked to consider “the future of the monarchy,” the “presentational style of New Labour or the current state of English national identity.”94
In this Brechtian-style production, Richard, played by Samuel West, dragged around a wooden box that would serve as dais for the throne, mirror and coffin. The circularity of power play was emphasized when, at the close, Bullingbrook (David Troughton) took Richard’s place on the end of the wooden crate and repeated lines from a “Prologue” (reassigned from 5.5.1–5):
6. Steven Pimlott’s 2000 Brechtian-style production where Sam West “dragged around a wooden box that would serve as dais for the throne, mirror and coffin.”
I have been studying how to compare
This prison where I live unto the world.
And for because the world is populous
And here is not a creature but myself,
I cannot do it. Yet I’ll hammer’t out.
At the start, strains of “Jerusalem,” the sound of marching, followed by bells, offered a pastiche of emblematic associations of “England”: patriotism, war, celebration, and ceremony. A purple light associated the set with the royal court as Richard, dressed in smart pullover and trousers, commenced his “Prologue” sitting on his box, then rose to put on his jacket hanging on the back of his “throne” (a gold-painted chair) and his crown, a thin band of gold. It had a powerful effect on the audience:
Pimlott’s Richard II at Stratford’s Other Place is a powerful modern production in a merciless white box. The audience are at the closest quarters with the players in experiencing the “prison” which Samuel West’s Richard compares to the world. West is utterly compelling through every stage of the character’s progress from indecisive monarch, through the pretence of an almost Ophelia-like madness, St. George’s flag wrapped about him, to being “eased with being nothing.” When he enters bearing his coffin like a cross you are also caught up in a passion play about the killing of a king. David Troughton’s Bullingbrook is no reluctant regicide but a hectoring tyrant on the make, a man who insists the audience should get to its feet to endorse his usurpation.95
Critics commented on “excellent performances from Christopher Saul (a bustling, creepy Northumberland) and David Killick (a shrewd, watchful York)”96 and Catherine Walker’s “touching” Queen Isabel,97 and applauded Sue Willmington’s design, which created “a lethal debating chamber”98 for “a gripping distillation of the pomp and circumstance, disillusion, confusion, and cynicism that now beset the term ‘Englishman.’ ”99
THE DIRECTOR’S CUT: INTERVIEWS WITH CLAUS PEYMANN AND MICHAEL BOYD
Claus Peymann was born in Bremen, Germany, in 1937. He studied in Hamburg, where he also joined a student theater company, and from 1966 to 1969 he was artistic director of Frankfurt’s Theater am Turm (TAT). In 1971 he directed the world premiere of Peter Handke’s The Ride Across Lake Constance at the Berlin Schaubühne am Halleschen Ufer, which he founded together with Peter Stein. He has been artistic director of the Staatstheater Stuttgart (1974–79), the Schauspielhaus Bochumer (1979–86), and Burgtheater, Vienna (1986–99). Since 1999 he has been artistic director of the Berliner Ensemble, where he staged his much acclaimed version of Richard II (discussed here), translated by Thomas Brasch. The production was awarded with the Berlin Critics’ Award and was invited to the German Theatertreffen as well as many theaters worldwide, from Tokyo to Stratford. In 2010 the staging was taken to Vienna Burgtheater. He is known for producing both classical work and premieres of Austrian dramatists, including plays by Thomas Bernhard, Peter Handke, Elfride Jelinek, and Peter Turrini.
Michael Boyd was born in Belfast in 1955, educated in London and Edinburgh and completed his MA in English literature at Edinburgh University. He trained as a director at the Malaya Bronnaya Theatre in Moscow. He then went on to work at the Belgrade Theatre in Coventry, joining the Sheffield Crucible as associate director in 1982. In 1985 Boyd became founding artistic director of the Tron theater in Glasgow, becoming equally acclaimed for staging new writing and innovative productions of the classics. He was drama director of the New Beginnings Festival of Soviet Arts in Glasgow in 1999. He joined the RSC as an associate director in 1996 and has since directed numerous productions of Shakespeare’s plays. He won the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Director for his version of the Henry VI plays in the RSC’s “This England: The Histories” in 2001. He took over as artistic director of the RSC in 2003 and oversaw the extraordinarily successful Complete Works Festival in 2006–07. His own contribution to this, and the company’s subsequent season, was a cycle of all eight history plays, from Richard II through to Richard III, with the same company of actors. This transferred to London’s Roundhouse Theatre in 2008 and won multiple awards. He talks here about his production of Richard II as part of that cycle.
Richard is traditionally described as a “weak” king, but that doesn’t seem a very rewarding place for a production to start, do
es it?
Peymann: It is precisely his weakness that makes Richard II the prototype of a modern-day politician. Isn’t it a frightening symptom that many politicians are simply not suited to the importance of their office, its responsibilities and demands? Many of them simply can’t fill those shoes. This is why the “weakling” Richard II was of particular interest to us and why the Berliner Ensemble decided to stage the play in 2000.
Boyd: Richard begins the play exercising considerable autocratic power with ruthless finesse. He has had his only perceived threat, Gloucester, assassinated, and when Mowbray, who carried out the political execution, is accused at court by Bullingbrook, Richard is able to silence Mowbray and exile him for life without being implicated himself. He also exiles the rising figure of Bullingbrook for ten years, commuted to six, and is able immediately to raise tax revenue to finance a war in Ireland. It is this very display of power that loses him allies and renders him weak.
From the first beat of our production there was an extreme tension around the tightly choreographed “submission” of the English Court to their absolute ruler.
The play is closely related to Christopher Marlowe’s Edward II, in which the king has explicitly gay relationships. And the great critic Samuel Taylor Coleridge saw in Richard what he called “a kind of feminine friendism,” whatever that means. Did you explore questions of the king’s sexuality and effeminacy?
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