Richard III

Richard III

The Swan Theatre, 1^st June 2012

Was Shakespeare a feminist?  That’s not a very original question.  I wonder how many theses are proposed along those lines each year.  Still, there seems no better play than Richard III to demonstrate an over-riding ‘yes’.

 The current performance at The Swan is a Machiavellian delight which channels greed, fury, duplicity and madness to such an extent that the audience is in no doubt that this play is first and foremost a tragedy rather than a history play.  Indeed, in the First Folio of Shakespeare’s plays it was titled ‘The tragedy of Richard the Third’.  Shakespeare distorts history into melodrama to a shocking extent.  Most of Richard’s appalling deeds in the play are fabrication.  Most evidence suggests that Richard was no more of a tyrant than the next Fifteenth-century King.  It seems that this is probably the point.  Richard may not have done half the things that the play suggests but given the power of a King, the play seems to show that he could have done them if he was crazy enough. 

Jonjo O’Neill’s Richard is certainly crazy enough.  His opening soliloquy shows him to be a menacing cripple whose boyish face is made truly horrible when he smiles to reveal a mouthful of rotten teeth because, of course, he ‘had his teeth before his eyes’ as Margaret tells us in Act IV, Scene IV.  He was not born with teeth, apparently, so this is pure fabrication on Shakespeare’s part but effective, of course.  As he comes to the end of his first speech, the orchestra begins to play creepy music, the sort that might overplay the speech of a Disney villain and as he leers at the audience, taking us into his confidence, we laugh at his villainy.

The laughs continue thick and fast through the first half of the play.  Richard’s wooing of Lady Anne and the murder of Clarence are turned beautifully into farce but as the action becomes more blood-thirsty, the laughs become more slap-stick.  When Richard is ‘playing’ the reluctant monarch, his henchmen are dressed as monks; when trying to convince the Mayor that the enemy is without and that he is the rightful leader, he and his men concoct of faux sword battle.  O’Neill throws himself around, his eyes growing bigger and crazier with all the ensuing bloodshed and the humour starts to feel misplaced.  But this is the great achievement of Roxana Silbert’s staging of the play. 

When we rejoin the action, after a long first half, Gloucester is now King and Jonjo O’Neill is channelling a camp, furious, petulant Napoleon; the tone has changed.  The message seems to be; ‘not so funny now’.  And indeed it is not, because the women take centre stage.  Act IV, scene IV is a triumph.  It is spectacular on the page and Silbert has ensured that it continues to sparkle on her stage.  Queen Margaret, Queen Elizabeth and the Duchess of York gather to bemoan the deaths of so many of their men.  All of them dressed in black and collapsed on the floor in desperation, the image of the trio is startling and powerful, echoing Macbeth’s witches in appearance if not in language.  This adds a supernatural power to the characters that seems to usurp anything that the male characters convey in all their lust for power.  Margaret, played by the talented and endlessly experienced Paola Dionisotti is given a ghostly, witchlike persona from her first prophetic appearance in the play.  Margaret has words for her fury and has voiced her dissent from her first appearance; the bereft Queen Elizabeth, who has channelled a sort of 1940s respectability throughout the play, begs to be given counsel on how to express her agony.  Margaret’s response is pertinent:  “Thy woes will make them sharp, and pierce like mine.”  Although, Elizabeth’s words have already wielded tremendous power as she speaks of her dead sons:

            “Ah, my poor princes!  Ah, my tender babes!

            My unblown flowers, new-appearing sweets!
            If yet your gentle souls fly in the air,
            And be not fix’d in doom perpetual,
            Hover about me with your airy wings,
            And hear your mother’s lamentation.”

 I insert the speech here because I think it is beautiful on its own but in the play its power comes from its juxtaposition in a drama that is about the parts men play and the duplicity of greed.  Buckingham, in advising the greedy Gloucester on how to act is a modern day spin-doctor without any political integrity.  Elizabeth’s honesty in this context gives emotional response a power above and beyond the tenuous power of covetous kings, who never last long once they have won the crown.

Was Shakespeare a feminist?  In this play he has distorted the facts in order to make a compelling and powerful drama that encompasses all facets of a twisted human nature.  He did not have to give these women a voice.  Richmond could have been presented as the all-victorious King and the power of virtue could have been all his.  Instead, Shakespeare shows even this character to be duplicitous and cunning (at Bosworth Field, Richmond places his doubles amongst the battle to torment and consume the energies of the failing Richard).  No male character is blameless or without a concern for his own portion of power and glory.  It is true that Richard never commits any of his murders himself but is able easily to convince others to conspire with him and for him.

I came away from this performance totally satisfied.  They had been expensive tickets – we sat right at the front; reluctant recipients of all that saliva, fearing for our lives as the swords swung before our eyes, close enough to see the sparks flying from the blades during the battle scenes.  It is tempting to see the price of theatre tickets, particularly in these times of austerity, as prohibitive and elitist but on this occasion I thought that I had received exceptional value for money.  Richard III is a long play and Richard appears in 14 scenes and delivers 300 speeches totalling over 1,000 lines.  The applause for Jonjo O’Neill was rightly loud, long and riotous.  To provide entertainment like that for three and a quarter hours night after night, sometimes twice a day is a commendable feat.