REVIEW: The Tragedy Of King Richard The Second, Almeida Theatre ✭✭✭
Mark Ludmon reviews The Tragedy of King Richard the Second at the Almeida Theatre starring Simon Russell Beale
Mark Ludmon reviews The Tragedy of King Richard the Second at the Almeida Theatre starring Simon Russell Beale
In Joe Hill-Gibbins’ re-imagining of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, long gone are the delightful fairies and light-hearted romance you might expect of a traditional production.
The play’s the thing – wherein to catch the conscience of a King. And the hearts of an audience. Turner needs to pay more attention to the play and the actors. At the moment, to slightly misquote Hamlet, “Why, look you now, how unworthy a thing you make of Shakespeare’s greatest play.”
There is an acute fascination in watching the richly intense banquet give way, bit by bit, to the advances of the common folk, to see the lavish table become stripped bare, and then transform into a place for measured debate instead of entitled excess. The wonderful lighting from Bruno Poet only accentuates the lush transition, as does Mary Chadwick’s atmospheric music. The hint of the regally attired Charles and his retinue, like a gorgeously detailed ghost, hovers in the background – there, but not there.