The Stratford Theatre Review: Richard II

By Ross

I was having a long conversation with a good friend about Shakespeare and the idea of running wild with different ideas and interpretations. My friend was more of a purist, wanting to see Shakespeare as it was intended to be in regard to time and place. I wouldn’t say I completely leaned in the opposite direction. But I did sit somewhere in the middle, embracing both attitudes that can look at his words from more than one perspective. Shakespeare to me can be almost anything one can envision. It can be more traditional, like the absolutely perfect presentation of his Much Ado About Nothing at the Stratford Festival this season, or it can be like the Disco-themed Studio 54 ultra-glamorous bedazzled production of Richard II that I saw the other night just down the street from the Festival Stage at the new and absolutely beautiful Tom Patterson Theatre. The only thing I would say a production requires is a clear vision; a solid reason for being, a strong storytelling focus, an understanding of the text, and a deep connection to the emotional core of the piece. If it has all of those ingredients, Shakespeare’s language has the ability to transcend time and place and can envelop us completely in its tragedy or its comedy, regardless of time and place, and in the best of all cases, both the pain and the humor within can be embraced as Shakespeare is want to do.

Director Jillian Keiley (NAC’s Copenhagen) notates her vision and her inspiration most compassionately within the program, writing about the unfathomable awakening of Richard II and his belief in his sacred lineage. That he is divinely appointed by God, where every thought, idea, and desire are Godsent and unquestionable. Keiley also attempts to unpack ideas of power and unchecked vanity that took residency inside Richard, and why, ultimately, playwright and author Brad Fraser (Poor Super Man; “Love and Human Remains“) was brought on board to adapt this play into a disco-era world filled to the brim with themes surrounding sexual freedom and change as a backdrop for the incendiary Poet-King’s dramatic and spiritual fall from grace and the throne.

The formula makes sense, especially when reading about the history of the man, King Richard II, and when Stratford’s reimaging of Richard II begins in all its glitter and glory to a disco beat, with black-clad angels reaching for the crown in a sharp intense spotlight, we lean in, looking to be heralded into the decadence of this glamorous world and see its relevance to this phenomenally interesting character from history. The feeling is Romanesque in its debauchery delivery and spectacle, with gyrations and hip thrusts, courtesy of choreographer Cameron Carver (Grand’s Cabaret), titillating the crowd in abundance. The conceptualization is a fascinating dive, but for this viewer, what was sadly missing from this production of Richard II was a sharpness to the storytelling and a deep enough dig into the emotional truth of the story. It was a spectacle, for sure, but with more moments created to shock than connect. Not across the board, but in an overarching kind of way, forgetting to lead us in and unpack the tale through language and delivery.

In this particular formulation, what was needed, in my humble opinion, was a stronger storytelling hand, leading us through the text with deliberation and the reincarnation of this story through the haze of glitter and glamour portrayed here. The idea is a sharp one, highlighting the unconfirmed sexual orientation and desires of King Richard II, played to the heights by Stephen Jackman-Torkoff (Factory’s Trout Stanley), and his deep sexual love bond with his downfall, Lord Aumerle, played determinately by Emilio Vieira (Canadian Stage’s Tartuffe). Richard fully believes they are the spiritual ideal embodying this form as God’s mouthpiece on Earth. But somewhere along this gilded road, the visuals and style overwhelm and distract rather than enlighten. The production sexualizes the scenario, particularly the well-ribboned bath scene, not to add greater meaning and depth but to bath the scenario in shock and surprise, as so much connection was lost for the sake of hot tub titillations and disco dance moves.

The theatrics are indeed sharply constructed, giving the glittery statuary ensemble of angels a playground to forever play it up like naughty school kids wanting to shock their parents sitting in the audience. And even if the formulation that the director had in mind is a fascinating choice and structure, the emotionality of the construct stays visual and not internal. The story gets as hazy and as unfocused as the mind does after a big night of drinking, drugging, and partying at the disco, as the angels roll in and out the white box runways making grand gestures around the rollie bag handles as if we should be amazed, designed with intent by Michael Gianfrancesco (Stratford’s Chicago). Sometimes too intently (and clumsily) like the disco ball cage Richard finds himself trapped within after the fall. With strong geometric lighting by Leigh Ann Vardy (Neptune’s Misery), expert sound design by Don Ellis (Shallaway’s Ann and Seamus), and over-the-top costuming flourishes of obvious gender conformity and non-conformity by designer Bretta Gerecke (Stratford’s The Neverending Story), this Richard II struts themselves forward with a sparkling distraction that never really elevates or expands.

The first act parades itself, sometimes cleverly into our senses, but along the way fails to address the obvious. I believe it was Chekhov’s Gun principle that stated details within a story, like drawing an actual gun, should ultimately contribute to the overall narrative eventually; that having a gun in a scene is a foreshadowing of its use later on, but in that first scene, when an argument between the solid Henry Bolingbroke, portrayed well by Jorin Hall (Stratford’s An Ideal Husband), and Thomas Mowbray, portrayed by Tyrone Savage (Crow’s 15 Dogs), erupts in the middle of the dancefloor, a gun is held high but not fired (unless I missed it). The sound could have been the most striking interruption, not just from the disco dance party energy, but as a way to throw us from Studio 54’s frenetic energy into the tight meaningful language of Shakespeare that soon follows. But the image of the holding isn’t enough, so the language feels like a sharp right turn on a dark road with no headlights.

King Richard plays and taunts the two men into a theatrical duel mainly to excite and entertain his party companions, fueling the narcissistic shades of their character that never really leave the King’s cartoonish crown. He exiles with a casual almost cruel air that takes most of the play to slide off our perception of the King, and without a deeper dive into his psyche, his character remains floating in a hot tub of self-indulgence and ridiculousness, and unfortunately, Jackson-Torkoff’s performance doesn’t really help that situation resolve itself.

The formulations and production ideals give the occasional glimpses of grand thoughtful visuals that made Act II resonate on a far greater runway. Characters mostly representing the side of the exiled and disinherited Bolingbroke give weight and determination to Richard II, like the well-formulated Duchess of York, portrayed by Debbie Patterson (Sick + Twisted’s The Threepenny Opera), the Duke of York, played by Michael Spencer-Davis (Stratofrd’s The Front Page), and the Countess of Northumberland, played strong by Sarah Orenstein (Stratford’s Wolf Hall). The role of King Richard’s wife, Queen Isabel, dutifully portrayed by Hannah Wigglesworth (Opera Nuova’s Little Women), fascinates but hangs out on the edges on some other dancefloor, not Richard’s Studio 54. There was a missed opportunity there, somewhere, but it is in the role of Lord Willoughby, portrayed by Charlie Gallant (Shaw’s Peter and the Starcatcher) where, surprisingly, the direction of Richard II decided to be vague in its approach to his sudden and unexplained illness. This could have connected the ideas of conservatism, hypocrisy, sexual identity, shame, internalized homophobia, and HIV/AIDS to the time frame of the disco-laden area, but in this one arena, the boldness of this reformation decides to be something else. It decides to not go there, but remain in the flamboyant hedonism of Richard and his cohorts.

Bolingbroke’s masculine stance and styling almost start to register as a theory that flamboyance and gender non-conformity equates to selfish ineptitude in a leader, and what the country really needs is a more masculine King. Not a smarter or wiser or more precise King, but one who doesn’t dress in pearls and diamonds. King Richard II might not have been a great leader by any stretch of the imagination. “It was argued that Richard, through his tyranny and misgovernment, had rendered himself unworthy of being king” [McKisack (1959), pp. 494–495], which in exact historic specifics may or may not have been the case, but bringing feminity and masculinity into the picture in such sharp contrasting tones almost felt divisive and shaming of something bigger than the actuality of Richard II. Am I taking it too far? Maybe, but something sat uncomfortably inside me, as the narrowing of vision and the dots that might be connected by the crowd didn’t make me feel supported as I walked out of the gorgeous Tom Patterson Theatre into the lovely Stratford summer night.