Corse Humours
Richard III
by William Shakespeare
State Theatre Company
Playhouse

It is the job of theatre to invigorate the classical repertoire and for that reason we must occasionally endure productions as ludicrous as the State Theatre Company of South Australia’s Richard III.

It is difficult to fathom the reason for this particular revival. Richard III at any time presents a problem for production and audiences – haw do we regard the central figure: is he evil incarnate or the logical extension of that barbaric struggle for ascendancy, dignified as the ‘Wars of the Roses’?

Director, Peter King, raises this question by including the prologue to Henry VI Part 3, but then forgets all about it. The production is set “in the aftermath of the Second World War.” The reason will remain one of life’s mysteries. Did the director mean to imply some parallel with Churchill – or the Third Reich? More likely it was to provide a chance to dress the cast like Spandau Ballet.

Even allowing for the confusion of setting a history play in the blitzed remains of the Hammersmith Odeon in 1945, there is a failure to make characters convincing as Soho toffs; hoodlum Sloane Rangers looking to rewrite Burke’s Peerage. Instead, William Zappa’s Richard begins as a choleric Stan Laurel with a dash of Fred Astaire, and from then on mugs his way from Lon Chaney through to Quasimodo.

Key scenes are monstered in this interpretation. The wooing of Lady Anne beside the corpse of Henry VI – a central display of Richard’s malign wit and mesmerising power, is reduced to alternate prating and bellowing and even, at times, comedy. Richard’s soliloquies are not chilling in conspiratorial candour, but displays of bombast in ascending octaves.

Unlike Ian Holm’s laconic, icy phrasing in the plain accents of English real-politik, Zappa’s Richard is straight over the top of the top. The death of the princes in the tower – the most unforgiveable of Richard’s crimes – is presented as pantomime. The young Duke of York, whose unwitting banter with his wicked uncle is filled with all the irony of misplaced trust, is presented as a screeching hybrid of Dennis the Menace and Fatty Finn. When he is despatched to the Tower with his feather pillow, it is hard not to think that Tyrrel showed some good taste in smothering him.

Deborah Kennedy as Margaret, “The She-wolf of France” and David Kendall’s sly, bureaucratic Buckingham, get some purchase on the material, but in the main the actors seem as confused by the truncated and complicated plot as the audience. We know who the King and Queen of the moment are by the huge grey fake furs they wear – rescued ·from the same Forties Goodwill bin that has served the rest of the cast. These people are supposed to be nobs, but the tat they wear makes George Raft look like a class act.

Despite the effectiveness of the set with its giant cutaway facades in livid pastels, the cast is uneasy within it. A bunch of flowers rolled off the pale corpse of Henry VI straight into a stage floor bunker and the head of Hastings – fresh from Fitch the rubber man – came close to rolling off the stage amidst the shocked guffaws of the audience. A construction resembling a gigantic armour-plated lamb’s fry caused many of the players to stumble and clamber in movement well below standard for professional theatre.

The battle scene at Bosworth is the final travesty. The dead reappear to the dreaming Richard like tourists on the poop deck of the Oriana and the battle scenes are full of pointless puff. By the time Richard calls for a horse, he just about is. It has none of the force of a man who knows bad karma has got him – it’s just stagey twaddle .

The dour, final speech from Henry VII calling everybody to settle down and become good Tudors is interrupted by the appearance of a gigantic stylised horse – late for Richard, or just another desperate ring-in ? We do not know.

Empire Times, Flinders University, Adelaide, February, 1985.