Richard III (review)

OSF's latest sweep through the history tetralogies, beginning with guest director Michael Edwards's 1 Henry IV in 1998, culminated this year in Libby Appel's Richard III. Appel directed the other plays in the series, including memorable, moving productions of 2 Henry IV and Henry V, a misconceived Richard II, and (with co-director Scott Kaiser) stripped-down versions of the three Henry VI plays. The strongest of the season's Shakespeare offerings, Richard III ran for eight months and 127 performances.

The production's austere set had a matte-black finish, a single column, and virtually no furniture. A narrow staircase descended away from the audience's sight, upstage right, and a low rampart crossed the back wall, with two tiers of steps descending to the floor, stage left. The unhistorical costume design used silhouettes and fabrics that alluded to, rather than copied, medieval and Renaissance dress—bright and glittering for the court's males, somber black for the mourning women.

Text cuts exaggerated the play's insistent focus on its fascinating protagonist. James Newcomb, as Richard, took his cue from Anthony Sher's legendary "bottled spider" performance (RSC, 1984). Richard's hump and withered arm and leg were less noticeable than the forearm crutches which he used to skitter across the stage in quick bursts of motion. His entrances for his opening soliloquy and his coronation effectively divided the play into the contrasting tales of his meteoric rise to win the crown and his slower, inexorable fall. Even the ill-considered framing device that brought the play's disconsolate female characters on first could not obliterate the power of Richard's initial entrance. He exploded out of the darkness upstage, charging straight at the audience, a frighteningly uninterpretable shape until he reached the center-stage pool of light. Newcomb delivered Richard's first speech with amusing, confident authority. Some playgoers grumbled predictably about "inappropriate" laughter, but Newcomb's Richard brilliantly achieved the seduction of his complicit audience, charmed at first by his witty words but revulsed later by his bloody deeds.

Richard's coronation marked his apex. To martial music, he descended downstage trailing a ridiculously long train of red satin and wearing a look of determined, inward self-satisfaction. Then, startlingly, he tripped and fell, shook off his courtiers' proffered aid, and glared at the audience. The confiding charm was gone, and Richard's downhill slide was underway.

The production also pointed up nicely the parallel scenes in which Richard masterfully uses his powers of persuasion on Lady Anne and Queen Elizabeth, signaling his success in the first instance by Anne's proud smile upon accepting his ring. Even more compelling was Richard's ambiguous encounter with Queen Elizabeth, to advance his plan of marrying her daughter. Queen Elizabeth's opaque parrying of Richard's sexually aggressive suit, with verbal dexterity and an answering kiss, left him assured of his conquest and left us uncertain of what we had just witnessed.

The moment made Elizabeth a more effective figure of female resistance than Queen Margaret, whose role Appel amplified by bringing her

Figure 1.

Plotting his course, Richard III (James Newcomb) proposes that Queen Elizabeth (Suzanne Irving) give her daughter to him in marriage in the Oregon Shakespeare Festival's production of Richard III. Photo: David Cooper.

onstage whenever others...