Richard III Review

On Saturday evening, along with a couple of like-minded friends (for like-minded, feel free to read batty!) walked into a tiny theatre space with no heating, no specialised lighting or sound equipment, no cafe or toilet facilities, having travelled up to London specially for the experience of seeing a production of Richard III performed by four women with minimal props on a performance space smaller than my lounge.

Batty? Perhaps, but the experience was magical and worth every mile traversed to get there.
The theatre itself contributed about 50% of the magic: it was the Rose, famous to anyone who has studied Shakespeare and Elizabethan Theatre, which, true to its name, has risen from under a sixties’ office block ready to be claimed as our own in the 21st Century.

The dimly lit foundations, gleaming under water, provided an atmospheric backdrop to the play, and a wonderfully haunting acoustic for the singing and drumbeats which added to the dramatic tension, as well as the other-worldly quality that permeated the performance.

The other 50% of the magic was supplied by four actresses from the Scrawny Cat Theatre Company, and if I had any questions about how four people would be able to present the myriad of characters Shakespeare put into this play (and I did!) the answer was ingenious: simple costumes, smoothly and efficiently changed, to tell us who is who, simple puppetry to represent child characters, and sharing the title role between all four actresses, each of whom brought a slightly different quality to a complex character, which served to point up Richard’s ability to be charming, scheming, openly evil or apparently sincere by turns.

Oh, and by judiciously trimming the play to omit some characters and bring it down to a length that modern audiences can cope with sans loo or heat. How those Elizabethan groundlings fared in poor weather I don’t know!

Like most people nowadays, I view Shakespeare’s representation of a villainous Richard as deliberate spin to please the Tudor overlords rather than an accurate portrayal of this historical figure, but let’s not allow a bit of slander to get in the way of telling a good story – after all, the tabloids today are just as happy to destroy reputations, and like so much of Shakespeare’s writing, there are elements in the play which provide food for thought about contemporary society.

An unusual take on a familiar play, but it remained true to the spirit of the piece and the audience was carried along by the story, able to suspend disbelief, as Coleridge would have put it, because of the acting ability shown by every one of the small cast. A truly inter-supportive team, each actress was able to change character not just with the costume – that served as a visual cue – but by a different stance, altered timbre to the voice, distinctive gait. It was evocative enough to make me sympathise with Queen Elizabeth’s loss of her sons, even while seeing them represented by nothing more than a couple of silky squares of material.

Sadly the run is now over. I feel lucky to have caught the last performance, and if you’ll take my advice, you’ll get along to the Rose Theatre to soak up the atmosphere, and you’ll keep a sharp eye out for future plays at the Rose – and any being produced by Scrawny Cat.

If Richard III is anything to go by, a wonderful evening’s entertainment will be guaranteed.