Richard III Revival 2013 - Articles Page 1.8
Run Time:
2 hours and 50 minutes, with one intermission
Opened: November 10, 20132 hours and 50 minutes, with one intermission
Closing: February 01, 2014
Richard III - 2013 - Broadway History , Info & More
Belasco Theatre (Broadway)
111 West 44th St. New York, NY
Direct from a sold-out run in London's West End, the critically-beloved, Shakespeare's Globe productions of Twelfth Night and Richard III come to Broadway for a 16-week limited engagement. Two of The Bard's finest plays are performed in repertory by a remarkable cast featuring two-time Tony Award winner Mark Rylance (Jerusalem, Boeing-Boeing), Golden Globe nominee Stephen Fry (Wilde, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows) and Tony Award nominee Samuel Barnett (The History Boys).
These classics are presented in the custom of how Shakespeare's plays were originally staged, with an extraordinary all-male company playing male and female roles; actors participating in the pre-show ritual of dressing and preparing their make-up on stage, in front of the audience; music played live on traditional instruments; and lighting created almost exclusively by 100 on-stage candles, adding to the intimate and authentic atmosphere. This is delightfully funny, timeless Shakespeare at its absolute finest, and it is not to be missed!
Richard Duke of Gloucester (Mark Rylance) is determined that he should wear the crown of England. He has already dispatched one king and that king's son; now all that stands in his way are two credulous brothers and two helpless nephews - the Princes in the Tower. And woe betide those - the women he wrongs; the henchmen he betrays - who dare to raise a voice against him. Monstrous, but theatrically electric, Richard is Shakespeare's most charismatic, self-delighting villain, reveling at every moment in his homicidal, hypocritical journey to absolute power.
Richard III - 2013 - Broadway Cast
FEATURED REVIEWS FOR Richard III
STAGE REVIEW Twelfth Night
9 / 10
Rylance plays the humpbacked and murderous conniver Richard III with much the same comic brio — he pats his shriveled (fake) baby hand when he speaks of being 'rudely stamp'd' and 'not shaped for sportive tricks,' then during his coronation flashes both thumbs up and whips his oversize cape about in childlike triumph. His Richard, while consistently entertaining, throws the play's more tragic elements somewhat off-balance, particularly in the many (more serious) scenes when he's off stage. Still, Rylance exquisitely manages Richard's tricky seduction of Lady Anne (Joseph Timms), whose husband and father-in-law he has killed. And there's a delicious crackle to the late scenes with Barnett's Queen Elizabeth, who responds to Richard's entreaties to woo her own daughter with a bold and surprising response. (No spoilers here.)
Yesterday at 10:00 PM 3Comments Theater Review: Say What You Will About Twelfth Night and Richard III
9 / 10
Rylance is also the comic engine of Richard III, but the success of that unusual choice is more equivocal. Certainly Richard is amused by his own depravity; after murdering Lady Anne’s husband and father, and prettily getting her to marry him anyway, he instantly gloats: “Was ever woman in this humour woo’d? / Was ever woman in this humour won?” But Rylance takes from such cues an idea of Richard as a grotesque glad-hander, an audience whisperer of Al Jolson proportions. He grubs for laughter, plays up his self-pitying streak as a ruse we are all in on. He’s perfectly happy to pimp his deformity, here rendered as a slightly warped leg and a tiny withered hand hanging from a palsied wrist like a brace of deflated balloons. You may think of Kristen Wiig’s demented Dooneese Boylan character.
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