RICHARD III (Shake-Scene Shakespeare Theatre Company)*****

 

By Megan

Link: https://www.patreon.com/shakesceneshakespeare (Shake-Scene recorded another Richard III in 2020. This is the one is from October 2021.)

Available until: Unknown

If you don’t know the normal British way of naming the Kings (which you might not if you don’t live in the UK), you might think Richard III is the third in a trilogy with Richard II being the second and Richard I… well maybe that got lost like Cardenio.

If you do know that Richard III is the third English King called Richard, you might think that Richard III is a standalone history play like King John.

It does work very well as a standalone play and I think it is one of the most popular Shakespeare history plays and you can see why when you watch it, especially when it is a brilliant production like this one. But it is actually the fourth play in a tetralogy which comes after Henry VI Parts I, II and III and that is why Shake-Scene Shakespeare Theatre Company decided to perform all four plays in a row over four really exciting months and with lots of the actors (when they were available) playing the same roles in the different plays.

It is sad to see the tetralogy end but it is a great way to end it. Richard III is full of drama and passion and this is really brought out by Shake-Scene in really brilliant performances that easily cover up all the stress and internet failure which was going on backstage.

One reason this play is so interesting each time you watch it is because of all the different ways you can play Richard III. In this production the role was played by Tamara Ritthaler who has played the role all the way through the tetralogy. She is a very clever Richard who enjoys his plotting and planning but he can seem likeable and trustworthy when he wants to. There is also a very big sense of lots of energy under the surface of the performance, the feeling that he could lose control and do something bad at any moment. Ms Ritthaler has set up her Zoom camera to show quite a large performance space so she is able to move around a lot like she would on a stage and it makes Richard into an even bigger and more powerful character.

There are a lot of characters in Richard III so there was a lot of role swapping and the actors all do really well, not just with performing the different roles but with swapping around from one to another and changing the name on their Zoom screen and wearing different costumes. Apart from Richard III I think Lawrence Carmichael is the only person who returns to a role he played in Henry VI Part III and he also played several other roles. I love the way he brings his characters to life and each one had a slightly different voice which helped them to seem even more different.

Dewi Hughes who played lots of different roles in Henry VI played Buckingham in this play and I love how he took us through Buckingham’s emotional journey and showed what happened to him and how his emotions changed. He is a really powerful character at first but he is affected by the things that happen to him.

Linda Mathis does the same with Clarence, she really made me care about the character straight away. He never seemed like a weak character but he is another one who is really affected by what happens. I think performances like this really add a lot to the play especially because you might not like Richard very much (though when you have an actor as good as Tamara Ritthaler you will always be fascinated by him).

All Shakespeare’s plays have good roles for female actors because male characters don’t need to be played by male actors but Richard III has some really great female characters. They don’t have social equality with the men but Shakespeare shows how intelligent and strong they are. It is really sad seeing Richard III win the verbal battle with Lady Anne but even though Eugenia Low’s performance is really moving, she doesn’t let Lady Anne become a weak character. She is also brilliant at her other characters including Edward IV. She is very good at playing characters who are dying and she doesn’t always do the same thing – when she plays Edward IV she shows that he is weak physically but you can still see that Edward has authority.

Bridget Randolph shows how vulnerable Queen Elizabeth is but she is also very strong, angry and passionate. I felt sad for her but I really admired her at the same time. Jenny Coverack is really angry and resentful as Queen Margaret but there’s also something really dangerous about her. Geraldine Brennan gives the Duchess of York similar characteristics and the scenes between them have lots of fire.

Richard III isn’t a play you really think of as a ghost play, not like Macbeth or Hamlet but it has lots of ghosts in it. The ghosts didn’t all look the same, the actors all found their own way of looking spooky and I think this worked really well. It is more fun for the audience if every ghost is different and you don’t know what the next one will look like and I bet it is fun for the actors to use their imagination when they are being ghosts. I also like that even though all the special effects are really good, it is not all about the special effects. They are still playing the characters and giving really good performances and that makes it extra clear that Richard III has killed real individual people and it’s a sad scene because it’s sad these people are not alive anymore.

Shake-Scene will complete the canon and will do online plays all next year! The plays I’m looking forward to most are Othello (my favourite and it was my first ever Shakespeare, I read a story version for children when I was seven and I loved it so much, I wanted to see the play), Hamlet (that’s a really hard play and I usually get a bit confused watching it but it has lots of really good bits) and King John (which I think is better than people say it is). There are some I’m not allowed to watch yet like King Lear and Titus Andronicus, I’ve seen lots of plays with really bad things in but I am a bit scared about Gloucester’s eyes and the pie. So maybe I will wait till I am more grown-up like maybe when I’m fourteen. But I think even when I have seen all the plays, I will keep finding new things in them. Aashiq (another blogger and an actor) says that even though I started my Shakespeare adventure when I was seven, I will never run out of new things to learn and think about and that is really exciting.

Shake-Scene’s next play will be Henry VIII which is not performed very often so I am really looking forward to that.