In its heyday just under a century ago, the theatre space in the Alexandra Palace complex could cram in some 3,000 spectators. Now, after an interval of 80 years (its most recent sustained use was as a BBC-TV props store) and an £18.8m restoration, it limits itself to a maximum of 850 and a mere 500-odd for the London leg of the Headlong company’s latest touring production. It’s an impressive hilltop location, offering panoramic views of London, but it suffers from two major drawbacks. Firstly, atmosphere doesn’t trump accessibility: the N22 postal district isn’t on or near even adventurous theatregoers’ maps.

The second and connected point is that it’s not just in order to draw audiences that the place needs big shows: reducing the number of seats doesn’t shrink the physical space, and masking off large areas on either side of the stage from this show’s playing area doesn’t make those areas any less empty and yawning. True, director John Haidar makes use of the space during the scene in which a supposedly reluctant Richard is “persuaded”, with much stage-management, to assume the throne: Richard’s minions are ranged around the auditorium’s circle, geeing on the crowd (i.e. us). For the most part, though, the moments when action spills off the stage feel tokenistic, too palpably calculated to try and fill a bit more of the place.

Speaking of calculation... “I have not that alacrity of spirit / Nor cheer of mind that I was wont to have,” observes Richard on the eve of the battle of Bosworth Field. In fact, he hasn’t had it since the interval. As soon as he ascends the throne, he collapses into a mass of insecurities which make even Macbeth look serene. It’s a sudden and radical shift in Tom Mothersdale’s performance, as throughout the first half he has been less the standard Richard revelling in his deceptive role-playing, but businesslike in his advance towards the crown. Haidar shows us exactly how far Richard goes (as well as establishing the cast of ghosts who overlook the proceedings) by beginning with his murder of his royal cousin from Henry VI part 3.

However, whether he is being plain murderous, delivering his (as it were) mustachio-twirling soliloquies or feigning sincerity, Mothersdale’s Richard never seems immersed in it. The grotesque thrill of seeing him seduce the Lady Anne over the bier of her murdered husband is perhaps more lacking here than in any production of the play I have seen. Yet in other respects the production is almost too traditional. This Richard is hunched and Igor-shambling, his left leg in callipers, making no effort to modulate the catalogue of deformity in Shakespeare’s script.

Chiara Stephenson’s design has a row of Gothic-arch-shaped one-way mirrors upstage in pivoting panels: the living enter and exit through these panels, as do the dead, with King Henry’s ghost collecting each of Richard’s subsequent victims, and we are also vouchsafed occasional glimpses of them through the glass. It’s efficient but almost entirely devoid of spark; the Ally Pally needs to find better fare if its latest incarnation is to have a viable life.

Written for the Financial Times.