So, with all the freezing temps and such I’ve been advocating staying close to home and warm. Surely this is the “winter of our discontent” (Act I, Scene I). But, indeed, I did “play the devil’ (Act I, Scene 3) because you’re running out of time to see Richard III at the Folger Shakespeare Library. For tickets, click here.
We’re lucky to be in a city with lots of venues to see Shakespeare and his contemporaries, and the Folger Theatre now offers a chance to get extremely up close and personal to the psychopath that was Richard III. Take that chance if you dare, but prepare yourself to come face to face with evil and the violence of ambition in this haunting performance.
Director Robert Richmond tells this story of the monarch’s ruthless grab for power in a modern voice, with a nod to our own contemporary bad guys. Costumes featuring studded leather, chains and every shade of black call to mind Tony Soprano and his foot soldiers, suggesting perhaps the calculated and violent alliances that bind the characters. That insidious evil is hard to ignore when your seat is just a foot from murder. And that’s just what happens for front row theatre-goers, thanks to Richmond’s decision to set up the stage in theatre-in-the-round style for the first time ever. This setting in the intimate Elizabethan theatre draws theatergoers in, making them complicit in Richard’s crimes as the bodies fall and he ascends to power.
Drew Cortese, in his first Folger role, plays the part with an oily finish. He makes you wince at his egomaniacal and diabolical plotting as he skewers one family member after another. While Cortese makes the monarch loathsome and cruel in Act 1, it’s Act 2 where he morphs into a demon and nails the Bard’s lines that make Richard as evil as popular culture makes him out to be. (Remember when his corpse was found beneath an English parking lot?)
The play features a show-stopping performance by Naomi Jacobson as the widowed Queen Margaret. Her rage dominates the stage and her small frame hulks over the vast space split open by the stage. We can see Richard’s deeds from many vantage points, as well as the ghostly visions of murdered children as his own death approaches. Queen Elizabeth, Julia Motyka, is mother to the two princes, played by brothers Holden and Remel Bretty. Her well-delivered and evocative speeches express the breadth of the effect of Richard’s cruelty. Queen Elizabeth and other women in Richard III do make some puzzling yet self-preserving choices. The sight of the two princes pounding on the grave from just a few feet was wrenching for this mom.
Check out this video to see the transformation of the theatre for the performance.