Shakespeare's Tribe

Robert Currier’s direction of Richard III at Marin Shakespeare Company is almost completely lacking in subtlety, and his star, Aidan O’Reilly, gives a performance devoid of nuance. I loved it. You see, that is how this production completely captures the current political climate. It is thoroughly relevant and wonderfully insightful about the sad state of partisan discourse in our time!

Politicizing Approaches

Richard III was the earliest of Shakespeare’s Machiavellian anti-heroes, in a strain that would peak with Iago. He is usually played, as in Ian McKellen’s outstanding film rendition, as a cynical fraud, publicly appearing to be the opposite of his evil, scheming true self—which he reveals only in soliloquy. Politically, productions using this approach often seem reminiscent of contemporary right wing pundits warning of the dangers of smooth talking lefties. (Surely I am not the only one who has noticed this rhetoric is usually applied to characterizing Barack Obama, and before him, Bill Clinton as two-faced politicians whose silver-tongued exteriors mask their real beliefs.)

Refreshingly, this is not the approach in this fascinating production, which sits somewhere on the opposite end of the spectrum. O’Reilly’s Richard is anything but smooth. He is loud, brash, and charmless. He says whatever his victims audiences want to hear, but without the slightest pretense (even in the moment) that he actually believes any of it. He preys on the gullibility of those who seem incapable of conceptualizing the existence of self-serving insincerity. Produced during the time period when Donald Trump has suddenly leapt to the top of the leader board in the crowded Republican presidential field, it is not hard to identify a contemporary referent. What might have seemed an unbelievable reading even a year ago, now seems chillingly plausible.

This interpretation says a lot about Richard, but more about his observers who seem to parse his words autistically, without the ability to read the attitudes and emotions that lie behind them. It is a very different production when the focus is not on Richard as imposter, but on everyone else as self-deceiving.

Representing Disability (or Not)

I admit to being thoroughly caught off-guard by the whole approach. All of the pre-publicity for the show focused on the fact that O’Reilly has been legally blind since childhood from retinoblastoma, a rare form of cancer of the light sensing cells of the eyes. Given the enormous amount of focus on questions of representation (that is, who can—and should—represent the characters in the plays) on the stages of Bay Area Shakespeare festivals this summer; along with a great flurry of rehabilitation of Richard’s reputation since his long-lost skeleton was recovered from under a Leicester parking lot in 2012; I was anticipating that O’Reilly might explore (and possibly reinterpret) this most famously disabled Shakespearean character through the metaphor of his own experience. That he did not do. Instead, he characterized Richard’s disfigurements quite conventionally, and as for his own challenges—those were handled so invisibly that one forgot all about them almost immediately. Given the obstacles, including some pretty complex stage combat, it is an amazing performance, but one in which his disabilities were disguised rather than directly referenced.

Supporting Cast

The supporting ensemble for this production is the strongest of the season. Michael Ray Wisely is brilliant as Buckingham, the one courtier who sees Richard for what he is and willingly accepts a role as co-conspirator (a la Ted Cruz?), but fails to realize that he is as dispensable as everyone else once he has served his purpose.

Phoebe Moyer as the prophetic, but powerless, former queen Margaret is haunting. The most complex performance of the night is given by Elena Wright, as the mother of the two young rightful heirs to the throne that Richard murders, as she desperately maneuvers to save her surviving daughter. (Those two children, the “princes in the tower,” are played by genuinely outstanding child actors Patrick Ewart and Carl Robinett.)

Several other standouts in the large cast included Michael Schaeffer, Chris Hammond, and Steven Price—all of whom play multiple roles; and Davern Wright, who is chilling as Richard’s henchman Catesby and then proves to be unexpectedly hilarious in the scene where he “spontaneously” exhorts the crowd to support Richard, reading his assigned part off note-cards.

Unfortunately at the performance I saw,  Jackson Currier’s voice failed him in the closing sequences when he was playing the hero Richmond (after earlier playing a terrific coke-sniffing, clueless brother to the Queen) so the final moments of the play, which depend on a pair of Henry V-like orations, fell rather flat. Richmond is not the focus of this production, however, so it mattered much less than it ordinarily might.

Camo and Glitter

Abra Berman’s costumes for the production are a mix of period finery layered over contemporary camo fatigues, a perfect metaphor for the way beautiful language is hung on top of pedestrian motives throughout the play.

Jackson Currier’s set, used for multiple plays this summer, is nicely refurbished for this particular play. Joel Eis provides the distinguishing set décor and props.

In the end, it is Richard Currier’s direction that makes this production. Currier is difficult to read, as he usually eschews conceptual approaches, and works hard to stay out of the way of his actors. This production has the strongest viewpoint of any of his I have ever seen, but whether that is intentional or simply a by-product of the zeitgeist is unclear. Whichever, it is certainly provocative!