A history play set in medieval times (updated to today by director Nicholas Hytner) with a complicated who’s who, a political thriller with contained action and the most beautiful verse, needs a charismatic lead. Hytner gives us Jonathan Bailey, heartthrob of Bridgerton and Wicked fans (out in force tonight), as King Richard.
A vast, long, black thrust stage, with audience on three sides (some sightline issues as always), allows the front rows to be in the action. In fact, we are the king’s audience—he addresses us. The front row opposite me is filled with his female claque. They have come only for him. But maybe they will go away with a taste for Shakespeare.
It’s a quirky sotto voce performance: fey, a little bit camp, head held just so, mouth pursed, body language giving away emotions, at times both fake and vicious (to John of Gaunt). Entitled coke-sniffing royal, Bailey gives it his best—it’s not an easy role, the role of king, one minute spoilt immature brat, the next in prison where he starts, too late, to understand his life. “I wasted time, and now doth time waste me….”
The divine right of kings would turn anyone’s head. Royal dynasties, succession, but it’s really a character study (with his cousin Henry as the foil), from arrogance to defeatism and self-awareness: “the worst is death, and death will have his day”; “the hollow crown”, “…let us sit upon the ground / And tell sad stories of the death of kings –“. It needs a John Gielgud to get the musical cadences right.
Poignant, tragic, the vicissitudes of history and power translated into a modern dress monochrome production designed by Bob Crowley with props popping up from the dungeons below. Chandeliers and lights descend from the heavens. Richard thinks he is secure until his cousin Henry unseats him, leading a rebellion, not against him initially but ostensibly for his own property rights. Richard capitulates in an instant. Why so easily, I never understood. Did he realise he had no other option, as almost all once loyal to him had gone over to Henry and he was doomed? “Weak men must fall”.
Interrogated by Hytner in a powerful if bleak production, Richard II was of its time and it would seem of all time. A dictatorial monarch, on the throne at too young an age, behaves like an indulged child. Has Richard ever been denied anything? Does he ever think, is he always impulsive and unscrupulous? Or is it role-playing, this being a king… All an act…
But actions have consequences. His courtiers and extended family turn against him and depose him. How is that possible when the Bishop of Carlisle says, “Fear not, my lord, that power that made you king / Hath power to keep you king in spite of all.” This is more than a family spat.
His misrule (and coke habit?) has emptied England’s coffers. When his uncle John of Gaunt dies, he seizes all his property and his son Henry’s inheritance to fund his vain Irish campaign. Gaunt’s son, Henry Bullingbrook (Hytner uses the First Quarto spelling), returns from exile with an ever-growing army. Pragmatic, he wants his own but sees the lay of the land and goes for it. Richard has ruined England. Gaunt in his “sceptred isle” speech to York says England, rundown by the king, “hath made a conquest of itself”.
It’s a power play with men in power suits conspiring in the Member’s Bar until they are in army fatigues leading their men behind a huge armoured gun. The stage is full of rubbish, this isle reduced and ruined. Richard is hiding in Flint Castle, the upper tier of the theatre. Lights and gun are trained on his white-shirted, saintly figure.
He comes down at Henry’s request and the crown is handed over with some reluctant play, the crown he took and brought from Ireland with him in a white plastic shopping bag… There’s something unstable and self-pitying about him. From being the anointed one, deposed, he acts like Jesus crucified. How quickly he capitulates. Why? More playacting.
How the vanity of power, the attraction of power, the riddle of power, its hypocrisy, plays with men’s minds. Henry, who becomes Henry IV, has a guilty conscience when Richard is murdered in his cell, yet he did say, “Have I no friend will rid me of this living fear?” (Does this remind you of King Henry II and Thomas Beckett?). He will do penance. So that’s all right then.
Much has been trimmed, colour has been drained, and Duke of York’s family could be middle class: York (Michael Simkins who seems to be in a comedy) and his wife (Amanda Root in walking shoes and fingerless gloves) in their country home comfy kitchen. Shuffling on bended knees before King Henry—which raises a laugh—they successfully plead for their traitorous son Aumerle (Vinnie Heaven). And so it goes, fickle fortune.
Royce Pierreson’s tall Henry Bullingbrook towers over slight Richard (is size relevant?), and Christopher Osikanlu Colquhoun is outstanding as a sleek conniving Earl of Northumberland. Sloaney shopaholic Queen Isabel is a delicate-accented Olivia Popica, who reminds me a little of a certain First Lady. Sadly, Clive Wood is indisposed and tonight Gaunt is played by Martin Carroll—in wheelchair, hospital bed and on walking frame. Richard lies on the bed eating the patient’s grapes. Not funny and not profound, just spiteful.