Richard II Off-Broadway Reviews

Critic's Pick. Inside a claustrophobic glass box, representing, at various points, the royal court, a prison and his own mind, Michael Urie looks desperate and insecure wearing the crown, alternating between rubbing and rolling his eyes. He appears most content when describing his miseries; self-pity is his happy place. In the Red Bull Theater’s vigorously populist revival of “Richard II,” his twitchy hands and darting glances also indicate something else, a signature of this magnetic performance: a guilty conscience.

Happily, director Craig Baldwin and the Red Bull Theater have achieved this latter result with a Richard II that leverages its chic, modern trappings to offer a striking vision of Shakespeare’s most poetic king. Behind a wonderful lead performance by Michael Urie, the show probes the warm interiority of the beleaguered Richard as juxtaposed against the cold, brutal political calculations of his counterpoint, Henry Bolingbroke.

Traitors abound in Richard II, and in this production, it’s not always clear who’s on whose side. Unfortunately, double-casting only makes matters more confusing. Though I’m not sure more actors could even fit on the Astor Place stage. The only time this production really breathes is when Urie is alone in that giant glass box.

Herein lies the production's greatest strength, Richard's clinging to the belief that the throne is his by divine right, and that whatever has befallen him is an affront to God as much as to his royal self, a nepo baby of his time. There is a certain amount of youthful petulance in his actions, befitting the situation since, in actuality, Richard was 10 years old when he ascended to the throne and was barely 30 when he died. But Urie also finds ways to signal a sense of irony and cynicism into the portrayal, which, perhaps, is the most successfully modern interpolation into Shakespeare's seldom-produced history play. Makes me wonder what the actor could do with the role of prodigal son Prince Hal in the ensuing Henriad plays.

Urie brilliantly embodies Shakespeare’s King Richard, infusing him with just enough whimsy and vulnerability to make this manchild pitiable. Pitted against his revolutionary cousin Henry Bolingbroke (an austere Grantham Coleman), Richard may not be in the right, but he sure is fun to root for.

Indeed, with such top-tier thespians on hand, one wonders if a “straight” production might have ultimately been more pleasing than watching Baldwin throw a lot of proverbial spaghetti at the wall to enliven the 2 ½-hour show. Gratuitous male nudity and homosexual kissing (no personal objections, but still unnecessary), onstage video cameras that don’t project anything, a 1980’s wardrobe (costumes by Rodrigo Munoz) that could have been stolen from Charivari, and the casting of the stunning transgender actress Luz Pascal (Pedro’s little sister) as Richard’s loyal queen are just a few of the intriguing if questionable innovations.

But this Richard II emerges more as an exercise in style than substance, unable to justify why its 1980s glosses enhance our understanding of this story or these characters. “I have been studying how I may compare / This prison where I live unto the world,” Richard says in the opening and closing lines of the show. And Urie fills the lines with a kind of weary resignation that marks his approach to his drawn-out abdication in the second act. But this production fails to make clear how Richard himself is chiefly responsible for his incarcerated fate, the architect of his own misfortune. (And it has nothing to do with his prolonged smooches with a boy.)

With little of interest characterlogically or politically, the production is hit or miss: some annoying gimmicks here (Daniel Stewart Sherman slipping into cornpone as a Southern-fried General Scroop; a final tableau from Richard that’s full-out Norma Desmond), a few stunning visuals there (kudos to lighting designer Jeanette Oi-Suk Yew, leaning into neon). A couple of performances honor the verse and suggest fully rounded people. Kathryn Meisle, always reliable, brings fire and urgency to the Duchess (usually the Duke) of York. Canada makes excellent account of Gaunt’s famous “this happy breed of men…This precious stone set in the silver sea” monologue, though most of the others fail to register at any juncture that a sceptered isle, this other Eden, hangs in the balance.