Shakespeare’s infamous villain is reimagined in Adjoa Andoh’s new vision of Richard III. Adhering to the play’s original 15th-century setting, complete with burring West Country accents, the production brings authenticity to Bard’s prose. This is combined with a new perspective on the outcast would-be-King, no longer an embittered hunchback but an audacious underdog, sweet-talking his way to England’s throne.
As we watch the Duke of Gloucester’s murderous tale unfold, we are at once rooting for his success and wishing for his demise in this vigorously fresh take on a play written over 400 years ago.
In many ways, this production is stripped back to its foundations, including Amelia Jane Hankin’s simple set of a single oak tree against a hazy brown backdrop. Bucolic English folklore and tradition are a strong theme in this production, which Andoh as a director has used to evoke a sense of place and history.
Andoh’s direction is creative but tight, choral singing and medieval stringed music often accent the verse, such as in scene one where a procession of merrymakers wreathed with greenery and antler headdresses chant the famous line: “Now is the winter of our discontent!”
Andoh’s Richard is pompous but playful, full of wisecracks and cheeky confrontation. One gets the sense that Richard has built an armour of humour around himself, conflated with his steadfast determination to take the crown. With a woman of colour in the role, Richard’s otherness is made visual, but to my mind with far more nuance than the villain demonstrating a physical deformity.
“a production not to be missed”
In the same way that Andoh’s size in comparison to her male counterparts is not immediately striking, it creates an undertone of difference. This subtext explores both the character’s drive for vengeance and power, and the othering of race and sex in modern-day society, but with superb subtlety.
While Andoh has successfully brought comedy to this production, it remains a tragedy strewn with heartbreak, thwarted ambition and corpses and boasts an atmosphere of intense foreboding.
Liz Kettle plays a resolute Margaret, her grief combined with an unquenchable thirst for revenge as she curses her enemies with matriarchal vitriol. Harry Clarke and Antoine Azor bring appropriate menace to the proceedings as they do Richard’s bloody bidding as Catesby and Ratcliffe. Incredibly innovative use of stagecraft is having the play’s murders depicted as shadow scenes, stirring the imagination to its darkest corners.
It would have felt like a virtue-signalling gimmick if this production had been executed without sensitivity and extreme skill. Instead, Andoh has taken the essence of Shakespeare, the mastery of his words and the richness of English tradition viewed through a new lens. As Richard says:
“My conscience hath a thousand several tongues,
And every tongue brings in several tales,
And every tale condemns me for a villain.”
This play invites the audience to be the judge and is a production not to be missed.
