About This Show

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.

Show Details

Running Time: 2hr 15min (0 intermissions)
Dates: Opening Night: 21 August 2018 Final Performance: 25 August 2018

Cast

Joshua King Richard II
Melanie Beckley Henri Bolingbroke
Hannah Victory Duke of York
Elene Clements Willoughby
Christian Warwicker Thomas Mowbray/Northumberland
Michaela Carberry Lord Marshall
Peter Hardingham John of Gaunt/Sir Stephen Scroop
Roisin Moore Green/Servant

Creatives