Richard II

Synopsis

At the age of only ten, Richard Plantagenet succeeded his father Edward III as King of England. It was 1377 and a time of great hardship following the Black Death, but Richard lived lavishly at home and, abroad, pursued an expensive and futile war with France. The taxes he imposed provoked the famous ‘Peasants Revolt’ of 1381 and his attempt to rule autocratically alienated both nobility and Parliament. Shakespeare’s loosely historical but theatrically wonderful account of Richard’s last days concentrates on his most fateful error - the exile of his cousin Henry Bullingbrook and the seizure of his Lancastrian estates. Bullingbrook would return to England, topple Richard and take the throne himself as Henry IV, setting the stage for the bloody ‘Wars of the Roses’ between York and Lancaster. The play’s extraordinary beauty and simplicity, and its study of a man reduced from – as he saw it - divinely appointed King, to a mere mortal without role, freedom or friends, put it among the most moving of all Shakespeare’s tragedies.

Our Review:

7 December 2011

Theatregoers arriving at Michael Grandage's farewell production are met by an arresting image: Eddie Redmayne’s Richard seated on the throne, deep in meditation. The lights dim and gradually the flatterers and the courtiers arrive and the play begins. For a brief few moments, we see the king alone.

What’s interesting is that it’s the only time Redmayne is stock-still; for much of the rest of the play he’s like a bundle of energy, emphasising his speech with furious hand movements. He’s a restless soul, with thought processes jumping from one topic to another, he seems to have the attention span of a coked-up banker. It’s seen to good effect in the coronation scene, pushing Bolingroke towards the throne, but at other times it seems an annoying distraction.

Redmayne captures the spoiled impetuousness and the petulance of a ruler who believes himself protected by reason of his anointed status. What he doesn't capture is the poetry R...

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Latest User Review

steveatplays - 8 February 2012:

Andrew Buchan was terrific in this, Eddie Redmayne was better. Shakespeare, however, was not at his best, as he doesn't fully justify the reasons how and why poor Richard II has to be deposed so cruelly. To make up for this, Eddie Redmayne gives us an incredibly wet and insular (appropriate for a king crowned at the age of 10 years old) Richard for the first half, pitted against an astonishingly macho Bolingbroke, played by Andrew Buchan. The clash therefore becomes one of the feminine versus the masculine, the fey versus the forceful. And in the second half, Redmayne rises to the occasion with an utterly poignant performance of tragic choked desperation, and hopeless romanticism and loss pertaining to the throne, the only role Richard ever knew. And as Grandage loses his throne, the coffin at the end seemed to be Grandage's coffin too. A wonderful end to a wonderful reign. (This review is of the final matinee on Feb 4)....

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