British, and in particular English, theatre audiences are often stereotyped as formally conservative, unwilling to consider much beyond a naturalistic production that adheres slavishly to the text. There is some truth in this, but only a very little. Indeed, on a number of occasions we feel disappointed, even sold short, when a production does not play fast and loose enough. Take the Brazilian Companhia BufoMecânica’s production, hosted by the RSC as part of the World Shakespeare Festival. We had been promised a multimedia, circus-skilled meditation upon the character of Richard of Gloucester drawing on all the history plays. What we get is more or less a straight run through Richard III save for three significant interpolations, and one of those is from the semi-related character of Gloucester in King Lear.
    
As for the style… well, a couple of musicians blend live playing with a programmed score, a video camera crops up a few times and some video projections appear on the backdrop and/or floor, but nothing that would turn a hair in 2012. A printed scene-by-scene synopsis (the piece is played almost entirely in Brazilian Portuguese, with surtitles) may promise wackiness such as “Boar-headed Richard […] watches as the other actors change clothes and dance”, but again the reality is more anodyne. The only significant oddity is that the character of Richard himself is played at various times by most or all the 12-strong cast, sometimes several at once, but to no notable effect.
    
Co-director Cláudio Baltar may once have been involved with punk-circus pioneers Archaos, but 20-odd years later the phrase “circus skills”, as is so regularly the case in theatre, basically means aerialism. And however competently executed the work on swings, ropes and so on may be, the benchmark of adventurousness in both conception and execution in this area has now been set by Iceland’s Vesturport company. Despite one or two nifty touches, such as the ghosts of Richard’s victims physically hovering over him and Richmond as they sleep on the eve of the battle of Bosworth, the Brazilians do not match up. And a three-hour running time makes for a lot of not much. I fear that the show’s London run later this month at the Roundhouse, lately the host of CircusFest, will expose it to an even more demanding audience.

Written for the Financial Times.