Motivations Murky

Sections

Neighborhoods

Features

NHI Newsletter

Legal Notices

Some Favorite Sites

Government/ Community Links

by christopher grobe | Oct 1, 2007 10:54 am

(1) Comment | Commenting has been closed | E-mail the Author

Posted to: Arts

Richard%20II%20photo.jpg Richard II is a play about profound confusion. Although it mimics the form of other Shakespearean history plays—a careful mixture of throne-room scenes, battles on the field, and behind-the-scenes views of private tragedy—it is gutted of the spectacle that this mode entails.

A promised duel ends before it begins when the King, to the bafflement of all, decides to banish both combatants. Threatened battles meet, by and by, with immediate and unconditional surrender—a debasement which the loser, not the victor, seems to demand. And the dignity of the throne-room scenes descends into absurdity when, late in the play, so many people are challenging each other to single combat that one nobleman needs to borrow an extra gauntlet to throw down.

With princely decorum disintegrating and without explicit, physically manifest struggle, this becomes a play about the subtle power of threat and the fragile psychology of the powerful. To enact such a play requires utter precision from actors and masterly storytelling powers from directors.

In the production that recently opened at the Yale Repertory Theatre, unfortunately, the storytelling fails at crucial points. Broadly speaking, director Evan Yionoulis captures quite well the symphonic blend of melee and anticlimax that comprise Shakespeare’s play, but she fails to maintain the moment-to-moment clarity of the complex plot.

This is not to say that the production is completely formless, but a few particularly knotty scenes—scenes crucial to the cohesion and intelligibility of the play—fail to communicate even the basic information of characters’ motivations and meanings.

One such scene, with which Ms. Yionoulis chooses to end the first half of the show, is the climactic confrontation between King Richard and his rival, Henry Bolingbrook, who has returned from banishment to claim his inheritance before Richard can seize and squander it. Meanwhile, Richard assumes that Henry also wants the crown—an offer which Bolingbrook accepts without batting an eye, despite his repeated protestations that he only wants his rightful inheritance.

In this scene, Jeffrey Carlson’s campy theatrics as Richard preclude any real sense of the king’s demoralization and Billy Eugene Jones (as Bolingbrook) plays steeliness to the point of inscrutability. With this as an act-closer, it was not surprising to hear conversations in hushed, bewildered tones filling the corners of the theater at intermission.

The pity is that both of these actors deliver rock-solid performances in isolated scenes. In the scene of his duel and banishment, Jones displays a subtle blend of anger and tact, courage and fear. Carlson, for his part, is very funny as the insouciant king of the early scenes and devastatingly muted when he must officially offer up his crown to Bolingbrook, but there is no compelling development connecting the two Richards.

Ms. Yionoulis also fails to control the comic potential of the later acts. For example, when a young lord rushes to King Henry to confess treason before his angry father can arrive to accuse him of it, she pushes her actors toward pure farce. In doing so, they lose sight of the real stakes (a human life, the betrayal of a son by his father) that make the humor shocking and powerful.

Although this production’s trajectory is a bit wobbly, one performance in particular gives the play a sense of shape. Alvin Epstein as John of Gaunt, the aging father of Henry Bolingbrook, wields Shakespeare’s verse so deftly and takes such full advantage of its emotive and intellectual punch, that Gaunt’s deathbed lament over the degradation of England echoes through the rest of the play.

Even when the details of the story are muddled, Gaunt’s ode to England’s former self allows us to understand the larger stakes of the tussle over the throne. He may only appear in a few scenes, but he gives one of the best Shakespearean performances I have seen in years.

Brenda Davis’s beautiful scenic design also succeeds in keeping in front of us the broader tensions of the play. Metal scaffolding comprises the bulk of the set, jutting out of the walls and arching high over the stage. Floating amid this matrix of criss-crossing metal are ten glass cases containing the gilded effigies of kings. Some, positioned upright, preside over the playing space while others, lying prone, seem like bodies lying in state. Kingly power and kingly mortality—the two axes of the play—intersect in this elegant design.

The atmosphere is that of a cathedral—a sacred space of humility and hushed voices. The set’s serene power contrasts magnificently with the gaudy decadence of Richard’s court and the rough cries of Henry’s army. In Richard II, Shakespeare depicts the degradation of the Church through the ouster of a divinely appointed, if ineffectual, monarch; the contrast between Ms. Davis’s set and the scenes played on and around it perfectly captures this sense of desecration.

Comment

posted by: dana b on October 3, 2007 1:11pm

I cannot believe how flattering the review you just wrote was to the Yale Rep’s recent Richard II. I thought it the worst production I’d ever seen. Here’s a review of Richard II that I wrote to a friend. I titled it:

“Are those sparkles on your shoes?”

Just thought I’d warn you away from Richard II—probably the worst production I’ve seen
of any play. The first half was full of men prancing about in silver and buckskin
footwear that distracted from the rushed dialogue. I don’t know if Shakespeare meant
things to be funny or if the moderns performing simply couldn’t deliver the lines without
a smirk. Post-modern self-conciousness run amok, maybe. Richard was prissy and
effeminate and ineffectual (though that last quality was suggested, not explained), then
deposed by the somewhat more stolidly masculine Henry of Bolingbroke. So what was the
intended or unintended message there?

I found out later that the actor playing Richard also plays the first transgendered
character on a daytime soap—I actually saw that scence by accident one day when I was
engaging in my secret role as procrastinatrix. He changes his name to Zoe. His
extravagent hand gestures and lippy pout, though suited (arguably) to the tragic girly
character, didn’t translate for me to a late 14th century king acting on tragically
flawed advice. I was thinking more how the leaders then would have been still reacting
to losing 1/3 of the population to the first incursion of the black plague in their
parents’ generation (1340s and 50s), and the resulting peasant revolts against the
extractions of feudalism (1380s and beyond), and the spectre of death just out of sight.
Richard might have been less insoucient and fey. On the other hand, maybe the director
was trying to do something path-breaking and I just wasn’t getting it.

New Haven Independent

New Haven Independent Login Form