The "Fascism and Its Consequences" Season: Richard Eyre's Richard III and Its Historical Moment

Richard Eyre's 1990 Royal National Theatre production of Richard III famously employed 1930s fascist iconography in its staging of Richard's rise to tyranny. Popular critical reception, however, has by and large identified the setting as German-influenced, missing the unequivocally English fascism Eyre intended to portray. This article examines the roots of Eyre's production in contemporary tyranny: both as a reaction to the human cost of dictatorships in Eastern Europe and as part of a 'dramatic cluster' of British plays in 1989-90 dealing with fascism and its consequences. Here, Eyre's Richard III takes its place in a wave of theatre looking back to oppressive regimes in mid-century Europe, drawing comparisons to nationalism, xenophobia and economic recession while Thatcher's Conservatives held power. Eyre's production depicted 1930s English fascism taken to its extreme that remained rooted in its present moment delivering a warning that, unless we remember, history is bound to repeat itself.