RICHARD II
Goodman Theatre
You have to look hard to find nobility in Goodman Theatre’s enterprising but wildly uneven modern-dress production of Richard II. A sporadically inspired but often self-indulgent effort, it substitutes anachronistic touches for a genuine vision of the play and its politics. And swift scene changes can’t camouflage the emptiness of several key performances.
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In the good scenes, someone trusted the material. Steve Pickering is wry as a gardener who wishes the kingdom had been pruned and nurtured as efficiently as his plants, and Richard’s assassination scene has a ferocious spontaneity that the delivery of the speeches overall never matches. The actors tend to fall into singsong cadences, pouncing on words rather than working but the thoughts–a bad habit American actors must fight when they tackle the Bard.
It’s a rare production that lifts the audience’s interest to the level of excitement. Proving triumphantly that less is more, Folio Theatre Company’s wonderful Henry IV, Part I grows with the telling, from the added introduction, a dumb show of Richard’s murder enacted in Henry’s face, to the equally bloody end, when the hollow crown rests as uneasily as ever on the king’s head. Director Alec Wild has done good work before (Folio’s resourceful Romeo and Juliet, for example), but Henry IV marks a quantum leap. Powerfully crafted, well paced, and riding a flood of intelligent energy, Wild’s concept-free staging leaves nothing to chance; with a few period costumes, next to no scenery, and some well-coached accents, this production demonstrates that all you really need are two boards and a passion, or to update the adage: it’s the acting, stupid (a precept the Goodman might be wise to recall).
