Review Roundup: RICHARD III at the Old Vic

The final season of The Bridge Project, starring Kevin Spacey in the title role of Richard III and directed by Sam Mendes, began previews at The Old Vic on June 18 and runs through September 11. The company will then embark on an international tour including the Athens & Epidaurus Festival, Spain's Centro Niemeyer, Hong Kong Arts Festival and Singapore Repertory Theatre, arriving at BAM's Harvey Theater in New York in January 2012. Further international tour dates to be announced shortly.

For tickets, visit: http://www.oldvictheatre.com

Michael Billington, Gaurdian: Spacey doesn't radically overthrow the Olivier concept of Richard the Satanic joker, as Sher and McKellen did. What he offers us is his own subtle variations on it: a Richard in whom instinctive comic brio is matched by a power-lust born of intense self-hatred.

Charles Spencer, Telegraph: The final season of The Bridge Project, starring Kevin Spacey in the title role of Richard III and directed by Sam Mendes, began previews at The Old Vic on June 18 and runs through September 11. The company will then embark on an international tour including the Athens & Epidaurus Festival, Spain's Centro Niemeyer, Hong Kong Arts Festival and Singapore Repertory Theatre, arriving at BAM's Harvey Theater in New York in January 2012. Further international tour dates to be announced shortly.

Paul Taylor, Independent: There are times when this Richard seems like a satanic second cousin of Vincent Price, with his little mocking tosses of the eyebrows, flouncily dismissive flaps of the hand, archly subversive pauses in the middle of a list or a line and in the rather camp complicity he sets up with his dupes onstage and with the audience in the theatre. Equipped with a brutally disfiguring hump and hobbled by a Keyser Söze-style limp, Spacey also communicates a terrible sense of the furious self-hatred, seething resentment and maternally fomented misogyny that evidently drive his Richard. Developing ideas he originated in a staging with Simon Russell Beale in 1992, Mendes's production is a model of clarity, fluidity and pace.

Henry Hitchings, Evening Standard: Spacey is immense as the monarch habitually (and unfairly) described as a hideous hunchback. With a substantial hump and a braced leg, he squirms around the stage. His villainy affords him pleasure, yet his self-loathing registers in his eyes, which betray the uncertainties behind his braggadocio. 

Quentin Letts, Daily Mail: Director Sam Mendes throws everything at it: battle drums, cloudscapes, video screens, Alice In Wonderland doors, more drums, surtitles, cross-dressing, a Mussolini hanging and yet more blasted Lambeg-style drums. All this on the Old Vic's enormous stage. The sheer showmanship is remarkable. Stunts, we got ‘em.There is even Hollywood actor Kevin Spacey as the hunchbacked horror. But here's the unexpected thing. Mr Spacey, normally so good, does not quite nail the part. He goes close but is ultimately undone by a surfeit of sarcasm and campness.

 

 

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