Reviewed
by Alec Clayton
Can
it possibly be that a play written at the end of the 16th century can
be ahead of its time in 2012 — so avant garde as to leave audience members
unsure as to whether or not they actually enjoyed it? . Or is that just my take
on it?
Harlequin
Productions’ King Richard III mixes settings and costumes of ambiguous time
periods (reminiscent of the Alan
Rudolph film “Trouble in Mind”) with harsh
realism and surrealistic abstraction to create a strangely mesmerizing
performance that I greatly admired even though I cannot honestly say I enjoyed
it.
An
annotation in the program by Linda Whitney begins with “The 500 years that
buffer us from the world of England’s King Richard III is a lens that magnifies
our view of him into a villain of hugely grotesque and dramatic proportions.”
The symbolic and highly theatrical elements in this production along with the horribly
quasi-humorous murder scenes serve as a magnifying glass trained on the
bloodthirsty king.
Highly
inventive from the very start, the surrealism is manifest even before the play
begins as strange mad scientists in white lab coats and face masks walk onto
the dark and foreboding set and stand perfectly still with weapons in hand
while audience members take their seats. While these creatures remain on set
the curtain speech is offered up in the form of a projection with an animated
bust of William Shakespeare warning audience members to turn off their cell
phones. Whoever put it together is not credited in the program but certainly
deserves recognition. It is one of the more enjoyable and imaginative curtain
speeches I’ve heard.
The lights go down and the not-yet king Richard (Daniel
Flint) lumbers on stage wearing black leather and chains and a long black
trench coat, a heavy brace on one leg. He utters the oft-quoted opening line:
Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of
York…
With
his long hair, his clumping leg and commanding presence, Flint is an ideal
choice to play the brutal, murderous king.
It
would be easy to say this is a modern version of King Richard III, but to say
it is timeless or perhaps even futuristic would be more accurate. I’ve already
described Richard’s clothing (costuming by Samantha Armitage). He can be seen
as a biker — shades of the recent Theater Artists Olympia production of Titus
Andronicus — or as a creature akin to Frank-N-Furter in The Rocky Horror
Picture Show. He stands out as a singular figure in that no one else in the
cast is similarly costumed. The rest of the men are dressed in business attire
from the 19th or early 20th centuries except for one scene in which
town aldermen appear dressed like newsboys in 1929. The women, when not in
military uniforms, are wearing dresses from an era closer to when the play was
historically set. And then there are Richard’s minions, the doctors or mad
scientists in their white lab coats who carry out the many murders Richard
orders. All of these odd and creative costuming choices, along with Linda
Whitney’s wonderfully dark and heavy set and Mark Thomason’s dramatic lighting
— lots of blood red in the darkness — add immeasurably to the moodiness of the
scenes.
All
of this darkness is punctuated with a lot of comedy, both in Shakespeare’s
pun-heavy word usage and in the uniqueness of the many murders. The methods of
murder — at least some of them, and I don’t want to give away too much — are
borrowed from such sources as Fargo and No Country for Old Men. They are
simultaneously shocking, horrifying and funny.
The
cast is very large. Among the outstanding cast members are Russ Holm as
Hastings, Ryan Holmberg as Rivers and Tyrrell, Frank Lawler as Buckingham,
Dennis Rolly as Clarence, and Kathryn Philbrook in multiple roles. Rolly is particularly
outstanding in the nightmare scene leading up to his murder, and Holmberg plays
a villainous circus strongman to wonderfully comic excess.
It
may be nit-picky, but the one thing that bothered me was the use of characters
entering and speaking their lines from the aisles, especially the scene with
the mayor and aldermen. They should have been on stage where they would not be
taken out of the action and where the audience wouldn’t have to crane their
necks to see them.
Also
deserving of special note is sound designer, Don Littrell.
I
noted that some folks left at the intermission which could have been because
they were expecting a more traditional Shakespeare play. They missed the second
half of this interesting and intentionally disquieting production.
WHEN:
Thursdays through Saturdays, 8p.m., Sundays 2 p.m. through Oct. 27
WHERE:
State Theater, 202 E. 4th
Ave., Olympia
TICKETS:
prices vary, call for details
INFORMATION:
360-786-0151; http://www.harlequinproductions.org/
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