A Kenetic Richard II Worth Raving About

Riffs on Shakespeare: richardthesecond
Theatre Passe Muraille Backspace
The National Post

Matthew MacFadzean is an electric young actor, best known for playing toughs. He is very sharp and fluent, capable of infusing his lines with maximum colour and lucidity while operating at maximum speed. This quality comes in very useful in richardthesecond, a monologue that he has written himself and that often operates at the abstract level of music.

At least it does for me, because for much of the time I had very little idea what MacFadzean was talking about. His play comes out of a pop high-tech world from which I am at least a generation removed. His style and assurance as an actor, though, seem to carry over into his writing, so I feel inclined to cut him a lot of slack. He plays Richard the Excellent, a media-soaked raver (I guess that's tautological) whose preoccupations are reflected in Rebecca Brown's production by the presence of a couple of hyperactive video screens.

MacFadzean has the stage to himself, but the screens allow some other actors to phone in performances. One of them gives a funny performance as a television news reporter putting stupid questions to young Richard and getting wiseass answers. I could be wrong, but I think this is one of Richard's fantasies.

Another is to identify himself with Shakespeare's Richard II; the show's opening and closing image is of our hero, seated, with a mirror ball and a Star Wars blade in place of the monarch's orb and sceptre. MacFadzean's thesis, lucidly stated in a program note, is that both Richards gain in awareness as their worldly fortunes sink.

There is quite a difference, though, in what the two figures have to give up. Shakespeare's Richard forfeits real temporal power; MacFadzean's loses only popularity, and most of that he seemed to be imagining. In other words, MacFadzean's Richard is a much lower case, which probably explains why he is spelled in lower case. He meets up -- on video -- with a spooky scientist; Gene is his name and genes are his game. He looks -- on video -- remarkably like John Lithgow. (I spent some time wondering whether the actor playing him actually was John Lithgow. I then noticed him sitting, in person, at the end of the row in front of me, and decided that -- since nobody was swarming him for autographs -- he probably wasn't. For the record, his name is David Francis.) Richard volunteers for an experiment of Gene's in, I think, cloning. Cloning is certainly mentioned; Richard even fantasizes, very amusingly, about what it might be like to have sex with his own clone. (At last, a partner who will know what he wants.) But all ends badly, or at least disillusioningly, leaving Richard carrying on not unlike the lobotomized hero of A Clockwork Orange. The story also recalls the futile rock-star-as-messiah fables that used to be so fashionable (Stardust, Performance, Tommy, and something with Paul Jones), though it's sharper than any of them.

Some easy targets like advertising and consumerism are amusingly assaulted, and MacFadzean has the admirable gift of satirizing a culture from a position deep within it. He also, all-importantly, has rhythm. In fact he has two rhythms, since at the end -- going further to meet me than I could go to meet him -- he goes into Richard II's despairing speech of self-realization in Pomfret prison, and does it admirably, continually coming up with new readings that make perfect sense. Stratford should snap him up: always assuming, of course, that he - like his Richard -- wants to be snapped.