It is becoming an inadvertent tradition
that Royal Shakespeare Company supremos set the seal on their
appointment by directing all eight Wars of the Roses histories. Gregory
Doran’s cycle may be disguised within the company’s six-year programme
to stage every Shakespeare play, but it is there none the less, and
gets off to an attention-grabbing start with David Tennant in the title
role of
Richard II.
It is an excellently clear production. National Theatre chief Nicholas
Hytner, who has remarked that even he takes 10-15 minutes to tune into
a Shakespeare drama, would have no problems with this opening-scene
presentation of two courtiers accusing each other of treason and
Richard failing to arbitrate. Tennant, however, strikes an unexpected
figure on his first appearance: in flowing robes, with hair halfway
down his back and an unusually precise accent, he seems rather like
King Elrond. But this is the starting point of a journey to prime
Tennant territory. This Richard is at first casually heartless, light
in manner but not in his conduct; then, the moment that Henry
Bolingbroke’s revolt appears to have a chance of success, Richard’s
inner house of cards instantly collapses and he begins to speak
“fondly, like a frantic man” – that is, he raves with paranoid,
self-pitying bitterness. (Elvish has left the building.) This Richard
does not cow Bolingbroke with dense musings on divine right; he gibbers
petulantly, not even attaining true tragic grandeur during his final
imprisonment. Tennant’s gift is to unravel such knots of language.
The rest of the principal cast is correspondingly heavyweight. Nigel
Lindsay’s Bolingroke (who becomes Henry IV) is a dignified bruiser;
early on, Michael Pennington as John of Gaunt and Jane Lapotaire as the
Duchess of Gloucester give a masterclass in history-play acting, and
Oliver Ford Davies as the Duke of York is consummate throughout at
showing us every detail of character and language alike. Stephen
Brimson Lewis’s set design is a tad excessive: at different points
Richard is flown in on a castle rampart and emerges from a dungeon
trapdoor virtually the full size of the RST stage. But this does not
get in the way of Doran’s staging, which even injects a note of
homoeroticism rendered poignant by subsequent treachery. It is all more
than enough to dispel any jaded seen-it-all-before sensation regarding
the histories to come.
Written for the Financial
Times.