The Guardian, 18th October 2013, Michael Billington
This show marks the start of Gregory Doran’s six-year plan to present the entire
Shakespeare canon. It’s fair to say that his own beautifully crafted, richly detailed
production sets a high standard for himself and others to aim at. David Tennant,
in a mesmerising performance that grows in power as Richard’s authority declines,
also reminds us that the Royal Shakespeare Company is a ensemble that paradoxically
needs stars.
It’s a sign of Doran’s care that he makes clear the complex back-story that illuminates
Shakespeare’s play. An audience needs to know that Richard’s original sin lies in
sanctioning the murder of his uncle, the Duke of Gloucester. Michael Boys began his
2007 production by having Richard stepping lightly over the corpse of the dead duke.
Doran, even before Richard’s entry, shows us elaborate funeral rites with three sopranos
singing religious anthems in the upper galleries and the Duchess of Gloucester bent
in grief over her husband’s tomb. This is clearly a court steeped in mourning.
The prelude also gives Tennant a vital context in which to work. His Richard, with
his brocade gown and Christ-like hair, initially affects an air of listless boredom
as his burly barons hurl accusations of treason at each other. But there’s a thrilling
moment when Tennant gives the banished Mowbray a piercing stare as if daring him
to spill the beans about the king’s part in Gloucester’s murder. Tennant combines
inner guilt with a careless disregard for realpolitik as he seizes the land and goods
of John of Gaunt after his death: a point reinforced here by the fact that we see
tuns of treasure being bodily transported.
Tennant’s strengths, as we know from his Hamlet, are a capacity for quicksilver thought
and an almost boyish vulnerability. And, even if he might do more to convey the patterned
lyricism of the language, which he brings out excellently is the fact that Richard
only learns to value kingship after he has lost it. In his decline, Tennant casually
tosses the crown away and, at one point, skittishly places it on the head of his
adored Aumerle. But in the Westminster deposition scene, where Tennant is at his
best, he challenges Bolingbroke to “seize the crown” and, when his rival rises to
the bait, immediately inverts it to suggest a falling bucket. Tennant’s great achievement
is to attract out sympathy to what the gardener calls a “wasteful king” who abuses
power when he has it and who achieves tragic dignity only in his downfall.
But this production, which combines period costumes with back-projections in Stephen
Brimson Lewis’s elegant design, is emphatically no one-man show. Nigel Lindsay’s
Bolingbroke is a palpable dangerous figure who treats Richard’s remission of his
initial banishment with surly disdain and openly scorns the deposed king’s self-conscious
theatricality. It is also good to see a number of RSC veterans operating at top form
in key roles.
Oliver Ford Davies is brilliant as the Duke of York in that he highlights both the
comedy and pathos of a man torn between ancestral loyalty to the crown and a recognition
of Bolingbroke’s power. Michael Pennington’s John of Gaunt is also a fine study of
a dying man bursting with intemperate rage at Richard’s betrayal of his country.
And Jane Lapotaire turns the Duchess of Gloucester into a silver-haired figure whose
widowed grief manifests itself in a burning appetite for revenge.
The packed houses for this production’s run in both Stratford and at the Barbican
may have much to do with Tennant’s star presence. But this is the strongest company
the RSC has fielded in years, and what Doran’s production brings out is the rich
complexity of a play that raises the eternal question of at what point it becomes
legitimate to unseat a manifestly flawed ruler. Shakespeare’s play may be set in
14th-century England. It remains, however, a timelessly political work.
The Independent, 18th October 2013, Paul Taylor
They covered themselves in glory five years ago with Hamlet; now David Tennant and
Gregory Doran join forces again for this lucid and gripping account of Richard II.
Having played the most intellectually searching of Shakespeare’s protagonists, who
is painfully miscast as a revenge hero, Tennant - in splendid form here - trains
his talents on the most self-absorbed and inward-looking of the Bard’s monarchs,
who is fatally miscast as God’s anointed deputy on earth.
In his gorgeous, gold-embroidered robes (and long, flowing hair extensions, to boot),
this Richard is wrapped in the mystique of medieval majesty. But he occupies the
Gothic throne with a slouch of disgruntlement, his features congealed in disdain.
Admirably resisting any temptation to make the king likeable, Tennant vividly exudes
the bored irritability that erupts in tyrannical caprice. And impatience is making
him reckless, too. In this production, he brazenly hears the dispute between Bolingbroke
and Mowbray at the (interpolated) ceremonial lying-in-state of the Duke of Gloucester,
whose murky murder (and, implicitly) Richard’s involvement in it) is itself the bone
of contention.
But the Richard is a Monarch who would always choose theatrical effect over political
prudence. With his great gift for playfulness, Tennant runs heavily sarcastic rings
round his usurper in the deposition scene. Holding the crown at arm’s length, and
with his back to the assembled company, he calls out “Here cousin”, in the tones
of someone inviting a dog to play fetch. This is not a Richard who luxuriates in
the lyricism of grief. Tennant delivers the plaintive, self-pitying arias with a
scathing irony for the most part, flecked by tiny surrender to abject panic - as
though he were at once sufferer and observer of the tragic process whereby, when
the royal persona shatters, it exposes the naked, insecure person underneath.
By contrast, Nigel Lindsay’s Bolingbroke presents himself as a plain-speaking bloke
who has returned from exile solely to claim his rightful inheritance - though there’s
a suggestion on his hooded watchfulness and the brutality with which he dispatches
Richard’s flatterers that he has a devious, long-term strategy. He plays his cards
close to his chest and is embarrassed by Richard, whose upstaging antics leave him
having to force face-saving laughter in front of his followers.
Interestingly, though, Doran is more interested in the king’s relationship with his
other cousin, the young Aumerle. I should perhaps issue a spoiler alert for the rest
of the paragraph. This production gives the pair a charged, private sequence on the
walls of Flint Castle (evoked by the mobile gantry that slices across Stephen Brimson
Lewis’s excellent design). The monarch’s speech of speculative capitulation (“What
must the King do now? Must her submit?) reduces his devoted number one supporter
to such heartfelt, quiet tears that Tennant’s Richard to touched to a moment of rare
compassion for another creature - treating his cousin to a tenderly passionate kiss
and a cradling on his breast. But Aumerle, whose riven emotional state is beautifully
conveyed by Oliver Rix, turns into the production’s most extreme casualty of the
world of divided loyalties. Shopped to the new king by his own father for his treacherous
plots, to what desperate lengths might such a man go to prove that he’s been born
again politically?
There isn’t a weak link in the cast. Ferocious eloquence overcomes deathbed infirmity
in Michael Pennington’s superb portrayal of John of Gaunt and Oliver Ford Davies
gives a fine edge of grumpy comedy to the Duke of York’s conscience-stricken dithering.
Another palpable hit for the Tennant/Doran collaboration.
The Times, 18th October 2013, Dominic Maxwell
He hasn’t got a clue, has he? You can see from the moment David Tennant’s Richard
II arrives on stage with his chin up, his hair Timotei-long, his robes and his diction
refined to the point of self-parody. This takes a moment to adjust to. So regularly
do we root for Tennant as the heroic outsider, whether in Doctor Who or Broadchurch
or even in his SC Hamlet, that it’s odd to see him back a losing horse.
When he descends from the ceiling on a golden throne, the gap couldn’t be clearer
between his notion of himself as a God-given ruler and our notion of him as a bit
of a berk.
Not that Tennant’s performance or Gregory Doran’s RSC production turn out to be cartoonist.
One of the hottest tickets of the year long before it opened, this is a clear, propulsive,
absorbing three hours of a history play that is no cinch to stage. After all, it’s
in verse. It has no battles. At the first sign of uprising, the bellyaching Richard
pretty much deposes himself(“let’s talk of graves, of worms, of epitaphs…”). “Richard
II is not an action-packed drama” understates the introduction to the Penguin edition
of the pay.
Here, thought, it grips, aided by Paul Englishby’s beautiful period music and Stephen
Brimson Lewis’s spare, gilded sets. And what Tennant does brilliantly, is to suggest
a man who feels as hollow as his crown. Who play acts at being himself. Who makes
bad judgements, such as expelling his cousin Bolingbroke, soon to become Henry IV,
that are a weak man’s idea of being strong. He is hiding his true sexuality too,
to judge by his long kiss with his cousin, Oliver Rix’s Aumerle. And when he is trounced
by Nigel Lindsay’s stocky, gym-teacher-like Bolingbroke, he goes from ruler to martyr.
He proffers the crown as if holding out a stick to a dog (“Here, cousin!”). It’s
electrifying.
We don’t love him, but we get his grief in a play suffused with a sense of loss.
Jane Lapotaire’s Duchess of Gloucester mourns her husband and Michael Pennington’s
John of Gaunt mourns what Richard has done to England in anguished moments that are
both magnificent and a bit hard to absorb so early on. By the second half, though,
Doran’s production can sell everything from with to desolation. Near the end, the
Yorks, played by Oliver ford Davies and Marty Cruickshank, row about his turning
in their son, Aumerle, as a traitor. It’s pretty funny. It’s also a resonant reminder
of how the power play and posturing of politics is no job for amateurs.
London Evening Standard, 18th October, 2013, Henry Hitchings
Five years on from his electrifying Hamlet, David Tennant returns to the Royal Shakespeare
Company to play Richard II. From the moment of its announcement this has been one
of the year’s hottest tickets.
Tennant does not disappoint. He delivers a vivid, intelligent performance, at least
as mesmerising as the best of his TV work. He is certainly not afraid to make Richard
dislikable. Instead of the poetic soul we tend to see, his Richard is irritable.
In the early scenes he is petulant and smug.
With fluting voice and waist-length hair (Tennant sports mighty extensions) he is
a picture of prissy narcissism. And he skips around the stage like a child who has
had too many sweets.
From the outset Tennant’s Richard is excitingly unpredictable and as his authority
crumbles he transforms intriguingly from a gilded tyrant into a more vulnerable character
- yet one who is capable of bursts of aggression. By the end he is a holy man in
a flowing white robe.
Gregory Doran’s production moves slowly for the first hour or so but it is satisfying
both visually ad dramatically. It also benefits from the strongest RSC cast in a
long time.
Tennant’s Richard contrasts nicely from Nigel Lindsay’s robust, manly Bolingbroke.
Michael Pennington makes a poignantly eloquent John of Gaunt, while Jane Lapotaire
and Marty Cruickshank bring real substance to lesser roles. Oliver ford Davies deserves
a special mention: his Duke of York is an unalloyed delight.
Doran places an unusual emphasis on the king’s cousin Aumerle (Olive Rix) and it
is Richard’s relationship with him- coloured by awkward lust - that defines the production.
This is a clear, detailed and dynamic account of a drama that can often seem gutted
with artful rhetoric and ceremonial formality. It is an impressive start to Doran’s
campaign to stage all Shakespeare’s plays.
The Daily Telegraph, 18th October 2013, Dominic Cavendish
Five year after his spellbinding Hamlet, David Tennant is back at the RSC and reunited
with director (now artistic director) Gregory Doran for Richard II. Last time round
there was a lot of hoo-ha about doctor Who and a box-office frenzy. Maybe there’ll
be more of that again, with Tennant joining Matt smith for the 50th anniversary special
next month. But for the moment, a calm air of focus prevails; Tennant, 42, is in
his natural element - and day tickets are available.
His hair takes some getting used to: great gingery-brown extensions trail girlishly
downwards. Long, magisterial, quasi-medieval robes add to the effeminate impression.
In Act III, at flint Castle, beset by ruin, this Richard leans close and kisses his
cousin Aumerle (the youthful, boyish Oliver Rix) on the lips. As with Hamlet, so
with Richard - there’s an identity crisis at play (“remember who you are”, Aumerle
counsels, as if that possible), but here it’s of a sexual nature too. And in a further
directorial flourish, Doran makes Aumerle the last face the imprisoned, ousted monarch
sees, plunging the dagger into him.
Overall, though, this production is more relevant than radical. Doran has suggested
he will work slowly, steadily through the canon - and the first scene especially,
in which Nigel Lindsay’s tough, gruff, almost too-solid Bolingbroke squares up to
Antony Byrne’s aggrieved Mowbray - each accusing the other of treason - feels slow
and steady to a fault. Richard’s reign, some 20 years in at this stage (1398), was
in severe trouble. Thanks to an emphasised aura of restraint - signalled by a stark,
simple set from Stephen Brimson Lewis, augmented by subtle projections on towering
screens - you don’t get much sense of the hurly-burly of this chapter of history
or of events spinning wildly out of the king’s weakening control.
With his startled eyes and concentrated frown, Tennant is frail, pale and consistently
interesting but the nervous energy he excels in is confined to quarters early on.
Trumpets sound, sopranos trill sacred music as if wafting incense; the king is embalmed
in ceremony, cloaked in remoteness.
It’s the older hands who galvanise proceedings with emotional intensity in the first
half. A quivering Jane Lapotaire as the widowed Duchess of Gloucester, spilling over
with unconfined grief, that perpetually stooped, hangdog actor Oliver Ford Davies
as the fretful Duke of York and Michael Pennington, little short of magnificent as
John of Gaunt - lending febrile and ferocious emphasis to his “This sceptr’d isle”
speech and to those last-gasp accusations against Richard.
The evening is always lucid but only truly crystallises as things fall apart. Richard
spasms with panic as he grasps the frailty of existence, crawling on the floor in
abjection. He’s appealingly sardonic as he bows in exaggeration before his usurper,
and at the end, having taken on the aspect of Christ, he appears aloft on a gantry,
looking down in beatific accusation as Bolingbroke contemplates the blood on his
hands. Tennant shines, but he has shone brighter.
The Observer, 20th October 2013, Susannah Clapp
It has been promoted as David Tennant’s Richard II. All credit to Tennant that it
is not, he is too good an actor to be a dominating star. He is elusive, as this self-regarding,
self-defeating king should be. He is sardonic, light-footed, unpleasant, alluring,
completely free of ingratiation and, by the way, not Scots. He is a primary but not
the only strand in the rousing triumph of Gregory Doran’s staging, his first Shakespeare
production since becoming the RSC’s artistic director.
Doran fires both barrels of Shakespeare’s gun, the tragic and the historical. Tennant’s
mercurial clarity is vital to the play’s slippery centre, the melancholy reflectiveness
and evocation of royal uncertainty that makes it look like and early shot at Hamlet.
He begins preening, skewed on the throne at an angle to everyone. In a court full
of bristling near-baldies, he has unnerving long Jesus tresses that he flicks over
his shoulders. He becomes skittish, teasing a favourite by placing the crown on his
head. He glimmers with white-faced intensity in his dark cell. He is will-o’-the-wisp.
Yet this is also a robust dissection of a corrupt England, an examination of dynasty
and decay. It bristles wit lickspittles and asset-strippers, with placemen who are
ripping off the state’s assets. A fine, restrained Michael Pennington gives desperate
dignity to John of Gaunt’s lush - sceptred isle and silver sea - lament for England.
The minute the old chap gives up the ghost, minions scamper to grab his coffers and
lug them across the stage.
The play’s long reach and political urgency are projected forcefully in a production
that draws on Stratford’s traditional strengths. It should be able to pass without
comment that Shakespeare is delivered at the RSC with ease, lucidity and rhythm.
Well, it has not always been so. Here, though there are no dud speakers, Emma Hamilton
brings a lovely grace to the small, beguiling part of Richard’s wife. As the Duke
of York, Oliver Ford Davies is radiantly authentic. He delivers many speeches as
if he were quietly arguing with himself and the audience were eavesdropping. When
he erupts into violent confrontation he is shattering. The erosion of the difference
between soliloquy and speech is surely one mark of a great Shakespearean actor.
The bustle and business of a court is enjoyably present in a production that features
wimples, trumpets and armour, some fairly camp singing and a few ranty bits round
the edges: would Nigel Lindsey's terrifyingly brusque Bolingbroke really win hearts
to become the people’s king? Yet just when you think it is wholly traditional an
extraordinary twist appears. The text has been tweaked to accommodate an unexpected
homosexual kiss, and an unexpected (that’s to say, rewritten) murderer of the king.
Both are provocative and both make sense. As does Stephen Brimson Lewis’s design.
It swims from one semi-abstract CGI grey sketch to another, suggesting that the gaudy
business of royalty, the difficulty of a man trying to work out who he is, takes
place in a world of indifference.
Financial Times, 21st October 2013, Ian Shuttleworth
It is becoming and 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 nonetheless, 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 problem with thus opening-scene presentation of two courtiers accusing each
other of treason and Richard failing to arbitrate. Tennant, however, strikes and
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 magic 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 Bolingbroke
(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
as showing us every detail of character and language alike.
Stephen Brimson Lewis’s set design is a little excessive: at different points Richard
is flown in on a castle rampart and emerges from a dungeon trapdoor virtually the
full size of the RSC stage. But this does not get in the way of Doran’s staging,
which even injects a note of homoeroticism rendered poignant by a subsequent treachery.
It is all more than enough to dispel any jaded seen-it-all-before sensation regarding
the histories to come.
