Richard II by William Shakespeare Page A

all three versions, with a central staircase creating “a rigid formality on the playing space that is reflected, with a vengeance, in the performances.” 33 More successful was Ariane Mnouchkine’s production in 1982 for Théâtre du Soleil in Vincennes. Inspired by Japanese kabuki theater, the production ran for over five hours, and drew critical praise for its precise choreography through which “the formality of the play’s constructions is revealed. The argument develops like a terrific algebra.” 34
    In the last two decades, two major London productions have shown that the play has lost none of its power to cause controversy. In 1995, Deborah Warner’s production for the National Theatre caused a stir with its casting of Fiona Shaw in the title role. Shaw’s performance deeply divided critics, prompting Paul Taylor to mount a defense in the
Independent
:
    Fiona Shaw’s dazzlingly discomforting impersonation of Richard is so integral to the thinking behind Deborah Warner’s gripping, lucidly felt production that it would only make sense to like neither or both … her portrayal of the monarch as an anguishedly insecure, clowningly exhibitionist man-child—mirrors more than subliminally the psychological confusions caused by the identity crisis of a King’s dual nature. 35
    As Shewring argues, “it is not the fact that the King is played by a woman that is significant; it is that the presentation of kingship is, in itself, an elaborate theatrical charade.” 36
    Trevor Nunn’s 2005 production for the Old Vic brought the play right up to date in a modern-dress production that used video to display footage of the decline of Britain, emphasizing both the impact of Richard’s ineffectual rule and his isolation from those effects, “the split between inner and outer, public and private.” 37 Starring Kevin Spacey in the lead role, combining authority with “a really terrifying temper,” 38 it was nevertheless the play’s contemporary resonances that once again commanded critical attention. The play’s cynical commentary on the interaction between the public and the ruling classes was made uncomfortably clear in Genevieve O’Reilly’s Queen Isabel, “interrupted in the middle of a Diana-style photo session,” 39 and Charles Spencer compared Spacey’s “self-dramatising” Richard and Ben Miles’ “humourless, sharp-suited Bolingbroke” to Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. 40 While perhaps not as directly dangerous as the Star Chamber of 1601 once deemed it to be, it is clear that
Richard II
remains a timelessly political tool for directors wishing to hold up Richard’s own mirror to today’s leaders.
AT THE RSC
    Shakespeare’s history is always about the “now” of Elizabethan England. 41
    Queen Elizabeth I: “I am Richard II, know ye not that?” 42
    Richard II
is a play that can stand alone, but directors also position it first in an epic cycle, as the catalyst for the bloody action that Shakespeareunfolds in his dramatic sweep of English history. In an interesting departure, Michael Boyd’s
The Histories
(2008) produced
Richard II
, not only as first in a chronological ordering of history but in a distinctly separate cycle, based on the order of their composition. The
first
cycle begins with Shakespeare’s earlier (written) plays,
Henry VI Part 1, Part 2,
and
Part 3
, and
Richard III
, and charts the playwright’s developing relationship with the politics of Elizabethan England, culminating in his dissection of kingship in
Richard II
, the strategies of king-making in
Henry IV Part 1
and
Part 2,
and the disturbingly modern account of Henry V’s decision to wage war with France through an appeal to the value of an English “nation.” The
second
complete cycle of eight plays charts “over a century of turbulent English history, from the usurpation of Richard II and Henry V’s glorious battle at Agincourt, to the bloody chaos of the Wars of the Roses and their brutal climax on Bosworth