Review Roundup: RICHARD II at Donmar Warehouse

Currently on stage at the Donmar Warehouse is Michael Grandage's RICHARD II, featuring Tony-winner Eddie Redmayne. Redmayne  has worked with Grandage in the past in "Red," in which he co-starred with Alfred Molina.

King Richard banishes his noblemen and seizes their land to fuel his own wars. As anger mounts, a battle for the soul of England begins and one man's divine right to rule is called into question. Shakespeare's poetic masterpiece is an epic tale of destruction, ruin and decay that casts light on the decline of a kingdom and the solitude of power.

RICHARD II opened December 6 and continues until 4 February 2012.

Henry Hitchings, Evening Standard: Redmayne's Richard is a deeply theatrical ruler, whose display of authority is steeped in rhetoric and a studied manliness that can't obscure his childlike tendencies - or indeed the essential fragility of his sovereignty. There's a wealth of detail in the performance. Some of it distracts us from the eloquence of the verse, but mostly this is a subtle evocation of how power stifles personality.

Charles Spencer, Daily Telegraph: Eddie Redmayne confirms his status as one of the most exciting young actors in Britain today with his often mesmerising performance as Richard II. He is by turn grandiose, camp, maudlin and self-dramatising, and sometimes all of these things at once.

MIchael Billington, Guardian: It is clear from the opening that Redmayne's Richard is a man encased in ritual: he sits silently on the throne in an incense-filled chamber as the audience assembles, loftily accepts courtly obeisance and clutches a sceptre as proof of his divine right. I was reminded of Ian McKellen who showed us a Richard so cocooned in ceremony he seemed to be gliding on castors and who was shocked into an awareness of his vulnerability. That's pretty much the line taken by Redmayne but to somewhat less effect.

Maxwell Cooter, Whatsonstage: Redmayne captures the spoiled impetuousness and the petulance of a ruler who believes himself protected by reason of his anointed status. What he doesn't capture is the poetry – there's more verse in Richard II than any of Shakespeare's plays – and the contrasts between Richard the king and Richard the man. He doesn’t really find voice until his final scene, singing along to the “sweet sour music”, a plain unadorned man stripped of his kingly trappings.

Quentin Letts, Daily Mail: Mr Redmayne certainly delivers an interesting performance. This Richard is not as tyrannical as some. He has the sort of mouth which opens and shuts a couple of times before passing judgment. When he gives up the throne to Henry Bolingbroke (Andrew Buchan, rather good) he succumbs to little more than petulance. With a really top-notch Richard we surely pity him a little by the end. That didn’t happen for me in this production. 

Libby Purves, The Times: In an early, famously explosive climax the dying John of Gaunt delivers his paean to 'This earth, this realm, this England': Michael Hadley finding an intense, despairing fire. But the two cousins are the core of the play: Redmayne’s Richard is all eloquent, self-dramatising kingliness, yet beneath it lies the trapped, vacillating self-doubt. 

 

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