Review: RICHARD III at A Noise Within

All these lords and ladies of England, jockeying for power and position – their own or their progeny. Watch them scheme to ascend the ranks or desperately make alliances to save their own skin. Amidst the plotting and backstabbing sits an individual who craves the ultimate position of power - the English throne, of course! – a man who will do anything and everything to acquire it. This individual needs no introduction. He is the self-adoring, physically misshapen Richard of Gloucester, Machiavel incarnate and arguably William Shakesepare’s greatest antihero. He is also called an “elvish-marked, abortive rooting hog,” a “foul devil,” and a “lump of foul deformity,” the latter two by the woman who will be seduced into marrying him.  

Embodied by the exciting Ann Noble and surrounded by a solid cast, Richard and his dastardly deeds are every inch at home within the world of Guillermo Cienfuegos’s sweet and seedy production of RICHARD III for A Noise Within. Setting the action in the 1970s, Cienfuegos has established a festering city/state where corruption and dirty dealings are played out by men in suits working in backrooms, behind tower walls and occasionally right out in the open. The landscape is minimal, scrims and scaffolds. Lighting designer Ken Booth and sound designer Chris Moscatiello punctuate the killings with a screech-blast and a flashy strobe, quickie bursts like something out of a horror movie. Ditto the highly creepy video dream sequences of Act 5 that have all of Richard’s victims cheering on Richmond while urging Richard to “despair and die!”

When she finally reaches it (not a spoiler alert), that big ungainly throne doesn’t seem to fit Noble’s Richard with any great comfort, despite the diligence and blood she has expended to seize it. Plus, this production very much seems to like its chairs, a pile of which play a role in the production’s opening montage. Chairs prove good for ominous banging. They also hide things. Like roses and crowns.     

That very helpful opening montage, executed by the cast, kicks off with John of Gaunt’s speech from Richard II reminding us that “This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England” has been ripped apart over years of war. We track Henry Bollingbroke’s usurpation through the too-brief glory of Henry V to the ineffectualness of Henry VI and the War of the Roses. The prolog moves us through a series of conquests and bloody assassinations, employing video projections to introduce us to a dizzying number of characters. Prologue concluded, on slinks Richard, who has already killed and more than ready to do so again.

Noble’s Richard, enjoys the craft of dissembling, but very quickly has little need to shroud who he is or what he’s after. As her early victories come to fruition, the actor is positively giddy with an “I pulled this off!” glee. This Richard carries a switchblade razor which he  is fond of casually whipping back and forth in his one working hand. He soaks his hand in the blood of the murdered Hastings and nixes an aide’s offer to wipe it clean. Here we have a Richard who gives a feral sniff of the assassin he has hired to dispatch the young princes. (Intriguingly, that murderer who agrees to “kill two enemies” of the King is played by a woman, the production’s only gender switch.)

Any play about power-protecting cowards bending the knee to tyranny feels disturbingly timely. Indeed, until the late arrival of Richmond (Wes Guimaraes), England is replete with schemers, betrayers and royals who fall like dominos to Richard’s carnage. Neill Fleming’s sickly King Edward gets barely a gasp before he expires. Lynn Robert Berg’s Buckingham, enjoys his ride as kingmaker up until the moment he outlives his usefulness.  As the two young princes, Brendan Burgos and Micah Lanfer eschew anything resembling cuteness, instead register a good amount of youthful spunk, and effectively treading on their murderous uncle’s last nerve.  

Mirrored against a low assemblage of men, Cienfuegos’s lineup of women is especially potent. Trisha Miller’s gun-toting Queen Margaret is as dangerous with her words as with her weapon, not one to mess with. As the widowed Queen Elizabeth, Lesley Fera moves from a gulled monarch to a mother desperately looking to protect her daughter desperate. Queen though she is, she too can play the power game. Veralyn Jones and Erika Soto get their arrows in as Richard’s mother, the Duchess of York and his wife, Lady Anne, respectively.

A couple summers back, I checked in on San Diego’s Old Globe Theatre as that company completed staging Shakespeare’s canon with a new two-part adaptation of the three HENRY VI plays. Given their history with the classics, A Noise Within is probably not far from achieving the same feat. Either way, it’s always a bloody good time to play among the roses. Especially with a lethal canker blossom like Noble’s Richard at its center.

RICHARD III plays through March 8 at 3352 E. Foothill Blvd., Pasadena

Photo of Samuel Garnett, Ann Noble and Ensemble by Craig Schwartz

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