The Bridge Theater is inside strolling distance of the Tower of London, the place in 1399 King Richard II was imprisoned and compelled to abdicate England’s throne in favor of his cousin, who grew to become Henry IV. The place higher to stage a brand new manufacturing of William Shakespeare’s play about Richard’s downfall? From the playhouse lobby, theatergoers can look out on the tower throughout the River Thames, and the gap of these 600 years shrinks to nothing.
On this modern-dress tackle “Richard II” directed by Nicholas Hytner and working by way of Might 10, the hapless king is performed by the English actor Jonathan Bailey, who’s on a scorching streak following current high-profile display screen roles — as Fiyero in “Depraved” and Anthony Bridgerton in “Bridgerton” — and is now taking over his greatest stage function so far.
Bailey provides an engrossing efficiency as Richard, whose corrupt misrule fuels standard assist for the usurper cousin, Henry Bolingbroke (Royce Pierreson), regardless of the medieval doctrine that the monarch is anointed by God and subsequently untouchable. After making a sequence of strategic blunders, Richard is decisively outmaneuvered by Bolingbroke’s insurgent military and meets a swift, brutal demise.
Historic accounts remarked upon Richard’s effeminacy and in Bailey’s adroit rendering he’s a capricious, flouncing sociopath whose each utterance is suffused with performative irony. He declares with mock solemnity that he has no alternative however to boost taxes — after which gleefully helps himself to a line of cocaine. Moments after his uncle’s demise, he hops onto the not too long ago vacated hospital mattress and blithely scoffs down grapes. When Richard lastly agrees handy over energy, he proffers the crown after which retracts it — twice — like a petulant little one refusing to half with a toy. All this badness is nice enjoyable to observe.
In distinction, Pierreson’s Bolingbroke has the abstracted air of a person impelled by forces better than himself. Together with his hulking body, balled-up fists and blunt vocal supply, he’s a hanging counterpoint to the dissipatedly charming Richard. (After one of many king’s extra florid speeches, a bewildered Bolingbroke impatiently asks considered one of his cronies to translate: “What says his majesty?”) Michael Simkins is the choose of the supporting forged because the Duke of York, who tries in useless to straddle the warring factions. His finger-wagging exasperation, verging at instances on slapstick, provides an audience-friendly commentary on the unfolding intrigue.
Whereas the performers are principally in dapper enterprise apparel, Richard wears a frock coat with suede loafers. His crown, an unembellished gold headband, is comparatively austere as crowns go, which paradoxically enhances its symbolic energy. (Costumes are by Eleanor Dolan.) Bob Crowley’s set design is minimal however elegant. Scene adjustments on the traverse stage are seamlessly effected with the assistance of hydraulic platforms: Rectangular segments of stage sink into the bowels of the auditorium after which resurface, bringing forth actors and props.
And there’s some deft lighting work by Bruno Poet, significantly within the penultimate scene, set within the Yorkshire citadel the place Richard sees out his second — and remaining — incarceration. The backlit bars of his jail cell forged lengthy shadows that cease simply wanting Richard’s mattress, the place he soliloquizes underneath a highlight after which is murdered by Henry’s henchmen.
It’s a disgrace, although, in regards to the snatches of vaguely portentous music that punctuate some scenes. The rating evokes an off-the-peg suspense that’s unworthy of Shakespeare and extra becoming to a TV present like “Succession.”
Anybody hoping for a comforting allegory of latest politics — a cautionary lesson about overreaching leaders getting their comeuppance — received’t discover it right here. Although Shakespeare’s play is unsparing in its portrayal of Richard’s failings, it’s agnostic in regards to the rights and wrongs of his overthrow. Certainly, Bolingbroke, along with his straight-talking model and blustering promise “to weed and pluck away” the “caterpillars of the commonwealth,” has extra in frequent with a populist demagogue than a democratic savior.
Henry’s accession to the throne sowed the seeds for the decades-long cycle of violence that will come to be generally known as the Wars of the Roses, bearing out the prophecy of the bishop of Carlisle — performed right here by a girl, Badria Timimi, and all of the extra Cassandra-like for it — that Richard’s deposition would carry “dysfunction, horror, worry and mutiny” in the long term. “The blood of England shall manure the bottom,” she warns.
The extra compelling drama right here isn’t the political intrigue, however the tragic transfiguration of the deposed king. Richard’s campy loquaciousness had hitherto struck a considerably determined, insincere notice, whether or not expatiating on the divine proper of kings or reproaching the viewers (his erstwhile topics) for his or her fickleness and indifference to his downfall. However his flip complacency then provides means, by way of panic and despair, to a circumspect serenity as he’s unburdened in defeat. This transition is hard for actors to drag off — they need to by some means develop into smaller and larger on the similar time — and Bailey executes it with admirable subtlety.
Conversely, the usurper is uneasy in triumph as the complete significance of his actions turns into clear. When Richard lastly locations the crown on his cousin’s head, Henry instantly removes it and sits all the way down to brood. His second of glory is a somber anticlimax.
They are saying character is future, in politics as in life, however the suggestion right here is that nice workplaces of state exert their very own degrading drive on all those that presume to occupy them. Legitimacy is a slippery forex — unquantifiable and ever in flux. It’s nearly irrelevant. Energy itself is the issue: People are usually not constructed to deal with it.