Richard II: trouble with dick

John Murphy and Haig Sutherland in Richard II (this time, it's personal); photo by David Blue

I’ve really struggled with this review. I saw the Bard on the Beach production of Richard II last weekend and have had a tough time formulating my thoughts. The main reason: I really didn’t like the show. You’d think it would be easier to write a nasty review than a glowing one but this isn’t always the case.

Bard plans to perform the entire history cycle of plays. Even in the UK, this is a huge and ambitious undertaking. Now, for my part, I’m not sure that mounting a collection of plays that includes some rather dubious entries is the best use of talent and resources (especially in such financially precarious times) but there you go, Bard is in the Shakespeare business and it is taking a risk putting on a show of such limited value as Richard II.

During the depths of my struggle a strange thing happened. While over at the Straight website reading about the Kevin Krueger mini shit-storm, I came across the following headline: Bard’s Richard II moving and insightful. Now, as a matter of principle (and to save my own sanity) I don’t read other reviews before writing my own but I just had to click through to find out what gives. Because, of all the adjectives that came to my mind last weekend, “moving” and “insightful” were not among them.

Colin Thomas was engaged by this production and in particular by Haig Sutherland’s “masterful” performance as Richard. This is almost exactly the polar opposite of my experience. My sense was that Sutherland (a very talented performer) was singularly miscast in the role of the over-reaching monarch.

Thomas and I do agree that Richard II can be tough going. It is mostly a play of men standing around talking about things happening elsewhere. It outlines how Richard loses his grip on power and the rise of Henry Bolingbroke (who goes on to be Henry IV in the far more satisfying sequels). The play contains a couple or three beautiful monologues and little else to my mind to recommend it. Although Thomas’ review has given me pause to reflect, I still stand by my initial feelings that this is simply not that good a play and director Christopher Weddell’s rather literal take on the material didn’t helped me through my difficulties.

I’m not overly familiar with the text but my sense is that Richard is basically unstable. He is given to rash and ruthless activity (he disinherits Bolingbroke in a stroke), and is happy to head off into battle over in Ireland in a manly sort of take charge kind of way. Neither of these acts spring naturally from the Richard that Sutherland presents us with. Instead, we get a rather wispy, introspective chap who could probably be sneaky if need be but I never bought the overt ruthlessness. He looks and behaves like someone who could be pushed around – both physically and psychologically – and he gets pushed around. If one of the dramatic tensions of the play is a fall from authority then this production pulls the plug on that charge.

Like others in the production, Sutherland does at times struggle with the language (there were moments where I found myself willing him to breathe as I thought he was going to run out of air before reaching the end of a sentence). Still, Sutherland is a gifted performer and he does have some lovely moments, particularly, again as Thomas notes, when contemplating the death of kings.

Richard’s foil in Bolingbroke is the equally miscast John Murphy, with whom we get a great deal of “I’m shouting NOW to make a POINT”, which means much is lost in a barrage of incomprehensibleness. I’m not really sure why actors choose to shout Shakespeare. I’m sure it’s satisfying in a Gestalt-way but aren’t people more frightening when they don’t shout, when they say the most challenging or outrageous things with a tone of dead calm? Murphy isn’t alone in the school of clenched-fist acting. Much of the play is taken up with men planning battles and in this production it often felt like boys in the tree house plotting their next water balloon fight.

It is in the smaller roles that some pleasure is to be had. David Marr does strong work as the Duke of York as does Lois Anderson as his wife. They have some delightful comic business at the end. Duncan Fraser as John of Gaunt delivers probably the most famous speech in the play about "this scepter'd isle" and does so with great dignity (and clarity!). Sadly, this good work was somewhat undermined later in the play when, playing the part of Richard’s jailor, Fraser gets a face full of gruel. Enlivened by Fraser’s shriek – who knew gruel could be so dangerous – it came off as a medieval pie in the face routine and was a highlight for my companion; she could talk of little else on the way out of the theatre.

One last point. For some reason we had to sit through a series of scene changes where peasants (looking as if they’d been hired away from a touring production of Spamalot) rushed around with trees, shrubs, black cloth and the like. We know far less about Shakespeare than we pretend, but one thing we can be fairly sure is that Elizabethan theatre companies didn’t spend time with such nonsense. They just got on with the play, galloping from one scene to the next. We can imagine trees and the earth of England if we have to. We can also dream of a green and pleasant land without so much shouting.

Richard II, by William Shakespeare. Directed by Christopher Weddell. A Bard on the Beach production. At the Studio Stage in Vanier Park.  Continues until September 18 for more information charge here.

 

By Andrew Templeton