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by William Shakespeare, directed by Martha Henry

Stratford Festival, Avon Theatre, Stratford

July 13-November 3, 2002

"Richard III: Reign of Error"

On July 13 the Stratford Festival celebrated its 50th season with the opening of "Richard III", the play that inaugurated the Festival in 1953.  After a long rousing ovation when Festival-founder Tom Patterson appeared on stage, the audience at the Avon Theatre in presence of the Governor General were treated to the worst production, professional or amateur, of "Richard III" that I have ever seen.  The responsibility lies entirely with director Martha Henry, who managed to draw truly awful performances from nearly the entire cast, and with an administration that allowed this to happen.  What better demonstration of how far Stratford has fallen than this?

Tom McCamus, Wayne Best, Lally Cadeau, Diane D'Aquila, Sarah Dodd, Peter Hutt, Seana McKenna, Scott Wentworth, some of Canada's finest actors, would seem to be a solid, exciting cast for this play, yet all are made to look bad.  The only explanation is that Henry, disregarding her vast experience, has seriously miscalculated how the play should be presented.  Despite the pointlessly appended subtitle, "Reign of Terror", the most terrifying aspect of the production is how Henry has trivialized the action.  For a start, Henry has directed the last of Shakespeare's First Tetralogy of history plays as a slapstick farce.  We hear the famous opening soliloquy first as a voice-over until Tom McCamus as Richard climbs down a tree (must be difficult with a withered arm) before he walks a step and falls flat on his face before continuing the speech.  Tripping over steps and furniture soon becomes a unfunny running joke that does exclude his coronation.  After Louis Applebaum's Festival Fanfare is played, he, arrayed in a gold brocade robe, take a step and again falls face first on the floor as the orb and scepter go flying.  Is Henry deliberately making a fool of the Festival?

In her director's notes, Henry refers to Richard as a Vice figure and Richard does share many aspects of that morality play character--direct address to the audience, stage-managing the action, narrating his intentions and commenting on their outcomes.  The comedy comes from our foreknowledge of the events the frisson of being in league with evil.  Henry has mistaken the nature of the Vice's comedy and made Richard an outright clown forgetting that the key to the Vice's and to Richard's effectiveness is that they must seem to be in complete control of the action or their overthrow is meaningless.  Henry's klutz of a Richard inspires ridicule not fear. 

As if this were not enough, Henry gives Richard's withered hand a Dr. Strangelove-like twitch that he subdues by stabbing it.  When he leads a group in marching and stops, the men all bump into each other as if they were the Three Stooges.  When his mother curses him, they repeat his every gesture.  Richmond delivers Richard his fatal blow by stabbing him with a tiny dagger up the battle-skirt (balls or rectum, you decide).  

The crudeness does not stop there.  Henry has encouraged everyone to give unbelievably exaggerated performances with virtually every line shouted, screamed or barked instead of projected.  Scott Wentworth brings in a rare bit of quiet as the dying Clarence, but in a bizarre move immediately reappears as the dying Edward IV using the voice of the Ghost of Christmas Past to disguise himself.  Sarah Dodd (Anne), Seana McKenna (Elizabeth), Lally Cadeau (the Duchess of York) and Diane D'Aquila (Margaret) all seem to be competing for the Coarse Acting Award by a Female in a Shakespearean play.  Their extended vowels, semaphoric gestures, melodramatic expressions make the show seem like an episode of "Blackadder" but without the laughs.  Peter Hutt reprises his overheated performance as Chauvelin from "The Scarlet Pimpernel" in the guise of playing Buckingham.

Keeping the actors' decibel level high through the three hours is not only tiring but ensures that the actors have no way to make sense of the lines.  Falling in with Henry's bigger-is-better school of acting are Wayne Best (Hastings), Robert King (Second Murderer), David Francis (Cardinal Bourchier) and Keith Dinicol (Lord Mayor of London) among others.  Only Patrick Galligan (Catesby), John Dolan (Stanley), Aaron Franks (Tyrrel) and Graham Abbey (Richmond) seem to resist.  Henry's disregard for clarity is evident in the scene with ghosts in Act 5.  The ghosts appear via film projected on Richard's and Richmond's tents, the curses to Richard and blessings on Richmond overlap so nothing is understood.  It's a surprise to see the ghosts of Rivers, Grey and Vaughan appear when Henry has cut Vaughan from the play and omitted the scene where the three are led to execution. 

The action takes place on Allan Willbee's unattractive, ill-conceived set.  It features unrealistically gnarled trees bound with steel reinforcement rods.  These frame a bridge and a partially constructed battlement of more reinforcement rods that lead to a stairway ending in a large dais in the centre of the stage.  Willbee's note claims this is to represent the conflict between nature (Richard) and civilization (everyone else), but the result looks more like an abandoned construction site.  The dais inhibits the free flow of traffic across the Avon's proscenium stage, so that the actors are blocked exactly as if the central dais were the Festival stage leaving the space on neither side of it unused.  To fill it Henry has actors stand about in decorative groups not even pretending to have conversations while actors on the dais play scenes that logically should take place in private. 

The height of this folly occurs during the climactic battle between Richmond and Richard.  Henry has a semicircle of men from both camps stand side by side and watch without intervening or displaying any emotion as the struggle to the death between king and pretender unfolds before them.  At other times she encourages distraction by have scene changes or other stage business occur during the play's most important passages.  While Richmond's makes the final speech of the play downstage, we focus on actors upstage struggling to undress the body of Richard for what turns out to be another pointless effect.

Just as the volume level remains high, so does Louise Guinand's lighting which, except for blackouts, seldom varies.  Henry uses Stephen Woodjetts's would-be scary movie music so often it further cheapens the already trivialized action. 

After the show an elderly couple from New York who had overheard me speaking with friends came up to share their views.  They had been coming to Stratford for 13 years and had noticed the general decline in Shakespeare productions.  This "Richard III" had had convinced them that if they came to Stratford again, since they love the town, they would not see any plays to spoil the experience.  Not exactly the legacy Tom Patterson had in mind.

©Christopher Hoile

Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.

Photo: Tom McCamus as Richard III. ©2002 Stratford Festival.