Richard II (22 page)

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:

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’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.”

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:

Critics commented on “excellent performances from Christopher Saul (a bustling, creepy Northumberland) and David Killick (a shrewd, watchful York)”
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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

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, does 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?

Peymann:
Richard’s sexuality is not in the foreground in Shakespeare’s play—in contrast to Marlowe’s
Edward II
, which is specifically
focused on the emancipation of and discrimination against a homosexual. The struggle for the realization of his love for men is a central theme in Marlowe, whereas the supposed homosexuality of Shakespeare’s King Richard II is rather an invention of literary criticism. Of course sexual ambivalence is an underlying theme in the Shakespearean human cosmos—evident also in his
Sonnets
. And it is obvious that King Richard feels happier in the male company of his courtiers than in the daily routine of his marriage. And—there is no heir to the throne. But gay?—No! Incidentally, there is also a tradition—similar to that in
Hamlet
—of casting a female actor in the title role. Fiona Shaw did a fantastic job of this a couple of years ago at the National Theatre in London. Although this is a tempting interpretation, it doesn’t interest me as a director. The sad goodbye kisses between King Richard and his wife Isabel—he on his way to the Tower, she fleeing back to France—those show intimacy and love.

Boyd:
Jonathan Slinger’s Richard loved the camp splendor of court ceremony and “dressing up” and at times resembled Elizabeth I in her prime.

There was an implied hierarchy in his harem of supporters whereby Nick Asbury’s Bushy was reconciled to being sexually sidelined, Forbes Masson’s Bagot was not, and Anthony Schuster’s Green was the young man of the moment. Isabella eventually won his deepest affection by loving him unconditionally through both her humiliation and his.

And his kingliness? He has a strong investment in the idea of the sacredness of monarchy and of the king having two bodies, one representing his personal self and the other his kingly embodiment of the state. Is it hard to put these very medieval ideas across to a modern audience?

Peymann:
Richard has two souls: his personal ego and the divinely appointed body of the King of England. Here the individual—there the politician. That represents a very contemporary phenomenon, doesn’t it? Today’s politicians also distinguish between person and office. And their credibility suffers from this schizophrenia.

Boyd:
The king’s body is closely associated with the land, and our stage had two arms, two legs, a huge helmeted head, and a torso which was ripped open often in our Histories’ cycle.

Richard began our production at the head of an elaborate body of court ritual which rendered vivid his “unearthly” status. Paradoxically, this was when he was at his most “worldly” in the play: modern, Machiavellian, and sensualist. Only when he shed the trappings of divine right did he discover his true divinity as a human and therefore as a king. Richard’s spiritual authority dated in our production from the “cleansing” shower of dust or sand thrown upon him by the crowd. No makeup, no wig, no magnificent gown, just a man mortified under God’s gaze and ours.

Jonathan Slinger began our production stepping gracefully over the body of the murdered Duke of Gloucester, played by Chuk Iwuji. Jonathan, playing Richard III, had murdered Chuk three and a half hours earlier as the sainted Henry VI; a character modeled consciously on Edward the Confessor, to whom people still pray at his shrine at the heart of Westminster Abbey. Jonathan ended
Richard II
with his blood spread over the stage in the same arc as Chuk’s had been spread by him in
Henry VI Part III
.