The Sisters of Stratford

Richard III
Royal Shakespeare Company
The Observer

Ralph Koltai’s set for Richard III (Olivier) looks at first glance like a couple of sculptures purloined from elsewhere on the South Bank; further gains reveals that one of them has the profile of an outsize executioner's block, and so indeed it proves. Richard’s victims are decapitated on stage, although for Buckingham something nastier has been reserved. 

If the sets are an unvaried grey, the costumes mainly ring the changes between grey and black (with the occasional extravagance like dressing Lady Anne’s attendant mourners in plastic macs.) This has a cramping effect on the actors, who achieve almost uniform anonymity. I would have expected Basil Henson and Andrew Cruikshank to do wonders for Hastings and Derby, but they merely come on, say their lines fast, and go off again. Mel Martin has become mysteriously elocutionary as Lady Anne. Jeremy Kemp’s Buckingham and John Normington’s Clarence are good, Yvonne Bryceland’s mad Margaret better and Anna Carteret’s Elizabeth almost excellent, though both actresses are hampered by an apparent effort to play their scenes of incantatory grief (every son a goner, and all of them names Edward) naturalistically. 

I also wondered what caused Maragaret to make her first entrance in the middle of a court who had to pretend for ages that they couldn’t see her, and why Christopher Morahan arranged his ghosts as a chorus instead of (as in the text) a series of solos. Massed supernatural exits are very hard to stage; this lot shuffled off as if someone in the underworld had just blown the whistle on them. 

In the middle of it all John Wood gives his Richard, a performance which for the first half I was quite unable to believe. Every hypocritical line was topped off by a sardonic glee that would have alerted the most unwary dupe. There is enough space in the soliloquies for Richard to enjoy himself, and these Mr. Wood explored with suitable relish. But with the dialogue he seemed uneasy, determined to scale it all down to the cool mockery of his role in Travesties. 

There is a limit to how far casualness can go in Shakespeare; I am used (though not resigned) to hearing actors preface each speech with ‘well’ or ‘now’; Mr. Wood comes up with ‘I mean, cannot a plain man live and think no harm,’ dealing a cause death-blow to metre and (using the word in its still valuable sense) decorum. 

The second act, as the hunted king gives more scope to his flair for logical dementia: the feeling of a mind running so fast that it will explode. (Mr. Morahan in his treatment of Richard’s henchmen comes up with some nice moments of what you might call police-state relevance.) I could accept that this Richard would play feverishly with toy soldiers, though toy drums and trumpets seemed a bit much. Besides there were no signs of incipient madness in what had gone before. Mr. Wood seemed obvious casting for Richard, and that should have been a danger signal; he is setting into a mould.