Willing to wound and yet afraid to strike, like certain modern politicians, Mr Lesser's Bullingbrook exhibits a wonderful mixture of power-hunger and residual guilt: the classic moment comes with Richard's ironic offer of "Here, cousin, seize the crown" when Mr Lesser instinctively backs off as if the diadem itself were charged with electricity.88
Jennings was praised as "a commanding presence throughout," but some thought "the fascist/Stalinist touch in the production is a touch over-done" with "every character, save Richard, dressed in black."89
Steven Pimlott (2000)
Steven Pimlott's production of Richard II in the intimate studio space of The Other Place was the first in the RSC's two-year project "This England: The Histories," a "cycle" of all eight plays in chronological order for which "there would be no attempt to impose a single directorial or design concept."90 Puzzled by the decision to choose different directors, designers, and venues, one critic asked: "Why stage a cycle if you plan an anti-cyclical style?"91 Another provided an answer: "This variety is in deference to the stylistic contrasts of the plays, but you can also see the fragmentation as a response to the devolving nature of Britain, and the evolving character of its monarchy."92
Pimlott's approach, it was suggested, "dramatically opened up Richard II to the present moment, and opened up the present moment to the play."93 The permanent white-box set designed by Sue Willmington, with environment designed by David Fielding, released the actors to tell the story "in what was avowedly the same real time as that of the audience." The spectator might be asked to consider "the future of the monarchy," the "presentational style of New Labour or the current state of English national identity."94
In this Brechtian-style production, Richard, played by Samuel West, dragged around a wooden box that would serve as dais for the throne, mirror and coffin. The circularity of power play was emphasized when, at the close, Bullingbrook (David Troughton) took Richard's place on the end of the wooden crate and repeated lines from a "Prologue" (reassigned from 5.5.1-5):
6. Steven Pimlott's 2000 Brechtian-style production where Sam West "dragged around a wooden box that would serve as dais for the throne, mirror and coffin."
I have been studying how to compare
This prison where I live unto the world.
And for because the world is populous
And here is not a creature but myself,
I cannot do it. Yet I'll hammer't out.
At the start, strains of "Jerusalem," the sound of marching, followed by bells, offered a pastiche of emblematic associations of "England": patriotism, war, celebration, and ceremony. A purple light associated the set with the royal court as Richard, dressed in smart pullover and trousers, commenced his "Prologue" sitting on his box, then rose to put on his jacket hanging on the back of his "throne" (a gold-painted chair) and his crown, a thin band of gold. It had a powerful effect on the audience:
Pimlott's Richard II at Stratford's Other Place is a powerful modern production in a merciless white box. The audience are at the closest quarters with the players in experiencing the "prison" which Samuel West's Richard compares to the world. West is utterly compelling through every stage of the character's progress from indecisive monarch, through the pretence of an almost Ophelia-like madness, St. George's flag wrapped about him, to being "eased with being nothing." When he enters bearing his coffin like a cross you are also caught up in a passion play about the killing of a king. David Troughton's Bullingbrook is no reluctant regicide but a hectoring tyrant on the make, a man who insists the audience should get to its feet to endorse his usurpation.95
Critics commented on "excellent performances from Christopher Saul (a bustling, creepy Northumberland) and David Killick (a shrewd, watchful York)"96 and Catherine Walker's "touching" Queen Isabel,97 and applauded Sue Willmington's design, which created "a lethal debating chamber"98 for "a gripping distillation of the pomp and circumstance, disillusion, confusion, and cynicism that now beset the term 'Englishman.' "99
THE DIRECTOR'S CUT: INTERVIEWS WITH CLAUS PEYMANN AND MICHAEL BOYD
Claus Peymann was born in Bremen, Germany, in 1937. He studied in Hamburg, where he also joined a student theater company, and from 1966 to 1969 he was artistic director of Frankfurt's Theater am Turm (TAT). In 1971 he directed the world premiere of Peter Handke's The Ride Across Lake Constance at the Berlin Schaubuhne am Halleschen Ufer, which he founded together with Peter Stein. He has been artistic director of the Staatstheater Stuttgart (1974-79), the Schauspielhaus Bochumer (1979-86), and Burgtheater, Vienna (1986-99). Since 1999 he has been artistic director of the Berliner Ensemble, where he staged his much acclaimed version of Richard II (discussed here), translated by Thomas Brasch. The production was awarded with the Berlin Critics' Award and was invited to the German Theatertreffen as well as many theaters worldwide, from Tokyo to Stratford. In 2010 the staging was taken to Vienna Burgtheater. He is known for producing both classical work and premieres of Austrian dramatists, including plays by Thomas Bernhard, Peter Handke, Elfride Jelinek, and Peter Turrini.
Michael Boyd was born in Belfast in 1955, educated in London and Edinburgh and completed his MA in English literature at Edinburgh University. He trained as a director at the Malaya Bronnaya Theatre in Moscow. He then went on to work at the Belgrade Theatre in Coventry, joining the Sheffield Crucible as associate director in 1982. In 1985 Boyd became founding artistic director of the Tron theater in Glasgow, becoming equally acclaimed for staging new writing and innovative productions of the classics. He was drama director of the New Beginnings Festival of Soviet Arts in Glasgow in 1999. He joined the RSC as an associate director in 1996 and has since directed numerous productions of Shakespeare's plays. He won the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Director for his version of the Henry VI plays in the RSC's "This England: The Histories" in 2001. He took over as artistic director of the RSC in 2003 and oversaw the extraordinarily successful Complete Works Festival in 2006-07. His own contribution to this, and the company's subsequent season, was a cycle of all eight history plays, from Richard II through to Richard III, with the same company of actors. This transferred to London's Roundhouse Theatre in 2008 and won multiple awards. He talks here about his production of Richard II as part of that cycle.
Richard is traditionally described as a "weak" king, but that doesn't seem a very rewarding place for a production to start, does it?
Peymann: It is precisely his weakness that makes Richard II the prototype of a modern-day politician. Isn't it a frightening symptom that many politicians are simply not suited to the importance of their office, its responsibilities and demands? Many of them simply can't fill those shoes. This is why the "weakling" Richard II was of particular interest to us and why the Berliner Ensemble decided to stage the play in 2000.
Boyd: Richard begins the play exercising considerable autocratic power with ruthless finesse. He has had his only perceived threat, Gloucester, assassinated, and when Mowbray, who carried out the political execution, is accused at court by Bullingbrook, Richard is able to silence Mowbray and exile him for life without being implicated himself. He also exiles the rising figure of Bullingbrook for ten years, commuted to six, and is able immediately to raise tax revenue to finance a war in Ireland. It is this very display of power that loses him allies and renders him weak.
From the first beat of our production there was an extreme tension around the tightly choreographed "submission" of the English Court to their absolute ruler.
The play is closely related to Christopher Marlowe's Edward II, in which the king has explicitly gay relationships. And the great critic Samuel Taylor Coleridge saw in Richard what he called "a kind of feminine friendism," whatever that means. Did you explore questions of the king's sexuality and effeminacy?
Peymann: Richard's sexuality is not in the foreground in Shakespeare's play--in contrast to Marlowe's Edward II, which is specifically focused on the emancipation of and discrimination against a homosexual. The struggle for the realization of his love for men
is a central theme in Marlowe, whereas the supposed homosexuality of Shakespeare's King Richard II is rather an invention of literary criticism. Of course sexual ambivalence is an underlying theme in the Shakespearean human cosmos--evident also in his Sonnets. And it is obvious that King Richard feels happier in the male company of his courtiers than in the daily routine of his marriage. And--there is no heir to the throne. But gay?--No! Incidentally, there is also a tradition--similar to that in Hamlet--of casting a female actor in the title role. Fiona Shaw did a fantastic job of this a couple of years ago at the National Theatre in London. Although this is a tempting interpretation, it doesn't interest me as a director. The sad goodbye kisses between King Richard and his wife Isabel--he on his way to the Tower, she fleeing back to France--those show intimacy and love.
Boyd: Jonathan Slinger's Richard loved the camp splendor of court ceremony and "dressing up" and at times resembled Elizabeth I in her prime.
There was an implied hierarchy in his harem of supporters whereby Nick Asbury's Bushy was reconciled to being sexually sidelined, Forbes Masson's Bagot was not, and Anthony Schuster's Green was the young man of the moment. Isabella eventually won his deepest affection by loving him unconditionally through both her humiliation and his.
And his kingliness? He has a strong investment in the idea of the sacredness of monarchy and of the king having two bodies, one representing his personal self and the other his kingly embodiment of the state. Is it hard to put these very medieval ideas across to a modern audience?
Peymann: Richard has two souls: his personal ego and the divinely appointed body of the King of England. Here the individual--there the politician. That represents a very contemporary phenomenon, doesn't it? Today's politicians also distinguish between person and office. And their credibility suffers from this schizophrenia.
Boyd: The king's body is closely associated with the land, and our stage had two arms, two legs, a huge helmeted head, and a torso which was ripped open often in our Histories' cycle.
Richard began our production at the head of an elaborate body of court ritual which rendered vivid his "unearthly" status. Paradoxically, this was when he was at his most "worldly" in the play: modern, Machiavellian, and sensualist. Only when he shed the trappings of divine right did he discover his true divinity as a human and therefore as a king. Richard's spiritual authority dated in our production from the "cleansing" shower of dust or sand thrown upon him by the crowd. No makeup, no wig, no magnificent gown, just a man mortified under God's gaze and ours.
Jonathan Slinger began our production stepping gracefully over the body of the murdered Duke of Gloucester, played by Chuk Iwuji. Jonathan, playing Richard III, had murdered Chuk three and a half hours earlier as the sainted Henry VI; a character modeled consciously on Edward the Confessor, to whom people still pray at his shrine at the heart of Westminster Abbey. Jonathan ended Richard II with his blood spread over the stage in the same arc as Chuk's had been spread by him in Henry VI Part III.
The central scene, when the crown passes from Richard to Bullingbrook, is usually referred to as the "deposition" scene, but doesn't it in some respects seem more like an abdication?
Peymann: Bullingbrook forces Richard to abdicate. But Richard exploits this situation. He acts out a scene in front of the entire Parliament. He becomes an actor, using refinement and wit to turn his tragedy into a public victory over Bullingbrook. In the "mirror scene" he casts himself as the victim and publicly scorns Bullingbrook, leaving him speechless.
7. Michael Boyd production: "Richard's spiritual authority dated in our production from the 'cleansing' shower of dust or sand thrown upon him."
Boyd: Richard states publicly and clearly that he is being not just deposed, but "usurped," and responds to Bullingbrook's direct question "Are you contented to resign the crown?" with the ferocious ambiguity of "Ay, no; no, ay, for I must nothing be: / Therefore no 'no,' for I resign to thee." Given that "I," "Ay," "eye," and "aye" (for ever) all sound identical, this reply could be read as "No." To the last, he calls himself "a true king."
And what about the development of Richard's language: the poetry is very formal at moments such as the one where he inverts the language of the coronation ceremony, but at other times--especially toward the end--it's much more personal and fragmented, isn't it?
Peymann: Richard II plays with all linguistic devices. He deftly juggles with courtly rituals and thereby questions their validity. He scorns all linguistic cliches. In the course of his political swansong his mental and linguistic ability to differentiate is increased. As so often in Shakespeare, he becomes more and more human. In the catastrophe he gains our sympathy. The translation--and the version used in our production--is by the significant German dramatist, poet, and translator Thomas Brasch (1945-2001). It sticks closely to the original and thereby stands in strong contrast to the Shakespeare image of the brothers Schlegel/Tieck and of Baudissin, which was heavily influenced by German Romanticism of the eighteenth century. Brasch's language is very poetic, full of comedy, direct and obscene. It is very "Shakespearean."
The language throughout is highly lyrical, heightened, poetic, isn't it? There's no prose at all: even the gardeners speak in elevated (and quite allegorical) verse! That's a far cry from the world of Eastcheap and Falstaff that will follow in the Henry IV plays, and indeed from the rough-edged commoner's voice of Jack Cade in Henry VI. Does this make Richard II somehow stand apart from the other history plays?
Peymann: Similar to the gravedigger scene in Hamlet, the gardener scene in Richard II fuses comedy, grandeur, and political polemics. The linguistic unity of Shakespeare's Richard II distinguishes it from the other history plays. It is in fact closer to Shakespeare's Hamlet. To put it bluntly: Richard II is a Hamlet come to power. That is an essential characteristic of this masterwork--which is unfortunately performed far too rarely. Similar to Hamlet, Shakespeare's Richard II is way ahead of its time. He endows the title characters with a psychological modernity that the contemporary modern psychodrama would only be able to show several centuries later.
Boyd: The language of Richard II is more refined and "exquisite" than the other history plays. This is partly a question of milieu: we barely ever leave the world of the court, and even the gardeners are gardeners to the Duke of York and Queen Isabella.
This is also a particular court and a play that is dominated by an intelligent and witty man who has cultivated a conscious courtly high style in those around him. The language of Richard II is designed to rise to metaphysics, to capture fine distinctions of thought on time, divinity, optics, music, and constitutional law.
It is even more potently a language of exquisite equivocation, with the refined vocabulary and subtle grammar that are necessary to tread the highwire over danger, to conceal one's true intentions, and avoid being condemned for perjury. It's a language equipped to walk on thin ice, or tiptoe through a minefield.
The first half of Act 4 Scene 1 is such a wonderful release for the audience as the language turns to direct abuse and mines explode all round the place.
Could we even say that it is a tragedy (the downfall of one man) more than a history play (the story of a nation)?
Peymann: In no other Shakespeare play are there more characters who cry or grow pale than in Richard II. The psychological richness of the characters--even going as far as self-analysis--gives this play such a modern character. Richard II is much more the tragedy of an individual than merely a station in the great carousel of power of the English kings.
Boyd: Richard II the character does earn tragic status, and we are privy to his insight and revelations as he falls.
Shakespeare's history plays are not just the story, but the tragedy (or downfall) of the nation, felt every bit as presently by the author and the audience, as the fate of Richard himself.
How much sympathy can we have for Bullingbrook?
Peymann: Through the injustice Bullingbrook experiences--banishment, emigration, and loss of his birthright--he evo
kes sympathy and understanding in an audience. Over the course of the play our perspective of Bullingbrook becomes more critical. Like so many fighters for justice and protesters against arbitrary rule, Bullingbrook leads a personal war, which becomes a civil war and eventually turns him into a criminal. It's the eternal struggle for power! Bullingbrook, too, must kill to stay at the top.
Boyd: If Shakespeare characterized the slaying of Richard II as the original Plantagenet "fratricide" in the Henry VI/Richard III quartet, he has become more circumspect by the time he writes his next cycle: Bullingbrook is no straightforward Cain, and Richard sure as hell is no Abel.
The "original sin" of the histories is revealed in Richard II as pre-dating Richard's death. Now it has become Richard's sanctioned murder of his uncle, Gloucester. There are echoes of Elizabeth's equivocation over her sanctioning of Mary Stuart's execution.
Henry has our strong sympathy as a vigorous and unjustly exiled seeker-of-the-truth. He loses this sympathy when he, as Richard had done before him, makes an offstage request for the assassination of his chief threat. Shakespeare has a long, slow punishment in store for Bullingbrook in the two Henry IV plays. God will only seem to be appeased at Agincourt, and even then the Chorus has to warn us (remind us) that worse is yet to come.
And York, the turncoat?
Peymann: York is an opportunist, turning to whoever happens to be the most powerful person at any given moment. Beginning as a follower and supporter of Richard, he becomes one of Bullingbrook's men. In our production York even takes on the task of murdering the king. He carries out this job eagerly himself. Our production ends in a pitiless slaughtering of all of Richard's followers and Richard himself. York becomes an accomplice of the new King Henry IV, alias Bullingbrook. That is the logical career progression from opportunist to henchman of the new dictatorship. A butcher from a family of Nazi-killers in a white-tiled, bloody slaughterhouse.