RICHARD II (The Shows Must Go On)***

 

By Emma

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Tzf3FZYqKM&t=1s

Available until: 16^th November 2020

I think it must be really difficult to be a man sometimes. We say men have it easy but they don’t always because there’s so much pressure on them. If a man said he didn’t think Fiona Shaw was very good as Richard II in her 1997 film, you’d probably get loads of women calling him sexist. But he might not have a problem with women playing Richard II – just with one specific woman.

That’s one reason why I’m writing the review. It’s possible for a woman to be sexist but it’s not so common as men being sexist and maybe we get away with it more? Anyway, I didn’t think Fiona Shaw was brilliant. She has a very beautiful voice and she did 2 scenes in Act 5 which I found really moving – her goodbye scene with Queen Isobel was really sad and showed a far more human side of Richard than we’d seen so far. He was really gentle and kind. Then the soliloquy in the dungeon was really good too. Fiona spoke in a really soft voice that made you want to listen even harder. (I’ve got something else to say about Act 5 but I’ll get to that later.)

But for the most part I didn’t really like the way Fiona played Richard. I found her a bit cold and I didn’t feel any sympathy for her. But there’s no reason why women shouldn’t play Richard II. Louise Lee played the same role for The Show Must Go Online and I did like her a lot. It wasn’t that Fiona was showing conventional femininity because she really wasn’t. She actually showed less of that than Louise if anything but apart from Act 5 something just wasn’t there for me in Fiona’s performance. Though it’s probably something I was missing rather than something Fiona was missing. A lot of it comes down to personal opinion, we’re not always going to like the same actors and the same interpretations. If we did then there wouldn’t be any point in trying different ways of playing a role. Fiona Shaw as Richard II happened not to work for me but that doesn’t mean she won’t work for other people and her being a woman definitely isn’t the problem because it wasn’t a problem when I watched Louise Lee.

Act 5 was all really good but most of it wasn’t there. They out about 3 scenes in the middle and then they cut it off after the soliloquy. There’s supposed to be a big fight after the soliloquy which is actually really important and then there’s another scene. It still made sense and the soliloquy was really good so it was a powerful way to end the play but it seemed like a really weird decision from director Deborah Warner.

Most of the rest of the play was good. I really liked how it was filmed, it wasn’t on a stage so it was nice seeing the characters in really authentic looking places. There was also lots of music used which I thought was really atmospheric.

I really liked Richard Bremmer as Henry Bolingbroke, I didn’t agree with everything he did but he seemed really decisive and in control and capable of leading a country. Graham Crowden is really brilliant as John of Gaunt, he puts so much emotion and character into the words and I felt really sad when he died. Donald Sinden who played the Duke of York is another one who makes the language sound so beautiful and really easy to understand.

Julian Rhind-Tutt sneers really impressively as the Duke of Aumerle and Struan Rodger is a powerful Earl of Northumberland. Although he didn’t have that much to do I remember Roger Sloman as Lord Ross very well, he has lots of presence. Sian Thomas is a sweet Queen Isobel. She’s the one who really brings emotion into the story and her genuine sadness makes me believe that even if Richard II was a rubbish King, he wasn’t a completely awful husband. (Alan says the real Queen Isobel was a little girl so she wasn’t actually living with him when the events in this play were happening but I think maybe Shakespeare put her into the play to show Richard has good qualities after all?)