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Theatre Reviews

Shakespeare Bulletin 29.1: 43–125 © 2011 The Johns Hopkins University Press.

Richard IIIPresented by Shakespeare & Company at the Founders’ Theatre, Lenox, Massachusetts. July 2–September 5, 2010. Directed by Jonathan Croy. Con-ceived and adapted by Tony Simotes. Sets and props by Patrick Brennan. Costumes by Arthur Oliver. Lighting by Les Dickert. Music and sound by Scott Killian. Fights by Ryan Winkles. Assistant director: Malcolm Ingram. With John Douglas Thompson (Richard), Elizabeth Ingram (Queen Mar-garet), Leia Espericueta (Lady Anne), Nigel Gore (Duke of Buckingham), Tod Randolph (Queen Elizabeth), Johnny Lee Davenport (King Edward IV, Lord Mayor of London, Blunt), Jason Asprey (Lord Hastings, Earl of Oxford), Rocco Sisto (Duke of Clarence), Bill Barclay (First Murderer, Sir Richard Ratcliffe), Josh Aaron McCabe (Sir William Catesby), Annette Miller (Duchess of York), Robert Biggs (Lord Stanley), Wolfe Coleman (Brackenbury, Bishop of Ely), Andy Talen (Earl of Richmond), Ryan Winkles (Second Murderer, Sir James Tyrrel), Douglas Seldin (Lord Grey), Enrico Spada (Earl Rivers), Zoë Laiz (Young Elizabeth), William Palmer (Edward Prince of Wales), and Judah Piepho (Richard Duke of York).

The Winter’s TalePresented by Shakespeare & Company at the Founders’ Theatre, Lenox, Massachusetts. July 15–September 5, 2010. Directed by Kevin G. Coleman. Sets and props by Patrick Brennan. Costumes by Kara D. Midlam. Lighting by Les Dickert. Music by Bill Barclay. Sound by Michael Pfeiffer. Fights by Kevin G. Coleman and Ryan Winkles. Choreography by Susan Dibble. Stage Manager: Diane Healy. With Jonathan Epstein (Leontes), Elizabeth Aspenlieder (Hermione), Jason Asprey (Autolycus, Court Officer), Johnny Lee Davenport (Polixenes), Corinna May (Paulina), Josh Aaron McCabe (Camillo), Kelly Galvin (Perdita), Ryan Winkles (Florizel), Scott Renzoni (Antigonus, Time), Malcolm Ingram (Old Shepherd, Archidamus), Wolfe Coleman (Young Shepherd), Dana Harrison (Emilia, Mopsa), Leia Espe-ricueta (Dorcas, Gentlewoman), and others.

Brett GamBoa, Dartmouth College

Despite financial trouble, changes in leadership, and a 2009 season full of remounted productions, Shakespeare & Company is surging. After a stunning 2008 Othello sent John Douglas Thompson to reprise

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the Moor in Manhattan—and into the first rank of classical actors—the company capitalized on its success with Richard III, a play that leans upon its star actor like no other in Shakespeare. The tantalizing prospect of Thompson’s Richard was not lost on ticket-holders, who bustled into the Founders’ Theatre more like a crowd at a Broadway opening than the staid versions of themselves that had formerly filled the stalls. Moments before an organ piped them into silence and the lavishly costumed cast entered en masse, there was a palpable sense among the playgoers that something important was about to happen.

It did. The initial tableaux dispersed to leave Thompson alone, supine and silhouetted on a dark stage, howling his discontent at the heavens. By the time he rose to all the height his humpback allowed (“But I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks”) Thompson had assured everyone that the relentlessly sincere, emphatically present acting that served his Othello so well would likewise distinguish his Richard.

It’s common to overrate the actor playing Richard, since the play offers him up like a birthday cupcake in a sea of oatmeal cookies—by wide margins its most repulsive and most attractive figure. However, it would be a feat to praise Thompson too much. His Richard was worthy of trans-oceanic travel. Some of what made it good would do as well for other roles: a booming and still pleasant voice that seemed always to be luxuriating over some syllable without stalling over any; a delivery relentless in pace and intensity, without ever sounding hurried; an abil-ity to speak in great swaths without throwing things away; a mind that never lapsed in its readiness to pick out difficult syntax with intonation; and verse lines more than usually intact, though without the breaks or breaths seeming scripted, so that the words hit the air as if for the first time. Toss in charm, a confidence that sanctioned each step or stillness, and the fact that Thompson listens hard—rather than acting as though he is listening—and you have someone well worth casting, in this role and perhaps in any other.

But however well the actor suited the role, the Richard produced outstripped the sum of his parts. For all his talents, Thompson’s signal success came because he didn’t enjoy being Richard—or, rather, because he didn’t enjoy being Richard for us. He concocted plans and counted out triumphs with gusto, but he didn’t take credit—as Richards typically do—for manipulating people while still carrying out the manipulations. Thompson played every interaction with absolute sincerity, as though he had forgotten that Richard was putting on an act too. He commiserated with Clarence (“We are not safe, Clarence, we are not safe”), perfectly

John Douglas Thompson as Richard III in Shakespeare & Company’s 2010 production of Richard III, directed by Jonathan Croy. Photo courtesy of Kevin Sprague.

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earnest in fearing their weakness before a scheming Queen. His jokes remained funny (“Why, this it is when men are ruled by women”) but Richard took no notice of them, as if blind to all but his brother’s plight. The play offers frequent chances for the actor to wink at the audience, to indulge his ego by having us appreciate the performance not only of, but also by, Richard. But Thompson declined each in favor of an evolv-ing truth, as though he had seen no part of the script save the speech it presently required. The result was an unapologetically human Richard, and one far more seductive and terrifying for so being.

The effects of his sincerity were most powerful in the courting scenes. Richard’s initial angling for Anne’s birthright gave way to his need for her. Again, he ignored what could be milked for the audience’s admiration and focused entirely on getting Anne softened up. He delivered witty retorts about her beauty causing his defects, or his fitness for her bedchamber, as urgent and impassioned truths; sending Edward’s soul to heaven to reward his virtues (“The better for the King of Heaven that hath him”) was here a wholly righteous act. Richard forced the audience to digest a man who seemed unaware that his own piety was pretended. “Why dost thou spit upon me?” was intoned by one on the verge of tears, an innocent

Leia Espericueta as Lady Anne and John Douglas Thompson as Richard III in Shakespeare & Company’s 2010 production of Richard III, directed by Jonathan Croy. Photo courtesy of Kevin Sprague.

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Silvius wounded by a heartless Phebe—leaving the audience to summon the pity that Anne would not. We knew the affection wasn’t real, but its unflinching demonstration was realer than everything else in the theater, battering at the audience’s assurance that Richard’s love was counterfeit, as the false lover turned true. With his sword at his breast, Richard talked as though he had already run himself through, winning the kind of credence that Cleopatra gets only after the adder’s sting. By the time a desperately sincere Richard asked “But shall I live in hope?” the audience yearned for his delivery—Anne’s relenting had never been so reasonable, or so welcome. By rejecting opportunities for the audience’s momentary and superficial appreciation, the production invited a vaster and more complicated engagement, disposing the audience against its own attitudes by deepening its alliance with Richard. This potential is always available, but Thompson realized it better than any actor I have seen.

The production was agreeably light on concept. It refused to point up subtext or psychological nuance, continually taking the text as it came and suggesting its influence on Thompson, or his on it. It preserved more lines than usual, though Tony Simotes, who ably conceived and cast the production, pruned too aggressively across the first two acts, occasion-ally ridding the verse of its rhythm. But the latter half of the play was

The cast of Shakespeare & Company’s 2010 production of Richard III, directed by Jonathan Croy. Photo courtesy of Kevin Sprague.

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surprisingly intact and edited with more care, though several omissions concerning acting and hypocrisy—Buckingham’s “Tut, I can counterfeit the deep tragedian,” and his offer to “play the orator” among them—felt like lost opportunities. The dress was fifteenth-century and extravagant, which contrasted well with the spare sets, some broken gothic arches piec-ing together to form various states of disorder in a loose complement to the narrative. Jonathan Croy, who stepped in to direct when Simotes fell ill, kept the focus on his actors, too often moving them without sufficient motive but always privileging the ears of the audience. Both Croy and Simotes deserve praise for trusting and assisting Thompson to evolve this Richard, and for situating him in a production as generous to him as he was to it. And by keeping Richard’s interest on his marks rather than on the audience, the other characters could emerge as something more than chess pieces to be played at (his) will.

The best of the supporting performances came in the roles of Marga-ret, Elizabeth, and Clarence. Several characters mimic Margaret’s curses, but Elizabeth Ingram wisely steered clear of their caricatures. Ingram resisted playing a stereotype as valiantly—and valuably—as Thompson. Combined with her humanity, her clear and rangy voice (that could crack on cue) allowed her curses to land without becoming wearisome or shrill. They mattered not independently but, rather, as a product of their author. Tod Randolph’s Elizabeth was the ablest match for Richard, whose pursuits she rebuffed with anger, but also with a gradually accruing and nervous curiosity about his intentions. As she began to fold (“Shall I be tempted of the devil thus?”) the audience was victimized as much by her heartfelt desire to understand how Richard could be in earnest, as by Richard’s seeming sincerity. He triumphed more over us because she had really been won. Sisto is a huge man, whose size trivialized the otherwise physically imposing Richard, leaving him threatening, ag-gressive, yet still somewhat lag of his more legitimate brother. Sisto was royal as Richard could not be, layering stillness upon stillness in contrast to Richard’s animation, speaking with as much conviction but less zeal. His very presence proclaimed Richard unfit for power, making Richard’s ambition for it the scarier.

Any overt directorial ingenuity centered on experiments in engaging the audience directly. The very good murderers in 1.4 (Bill Barclay and Ryan Winkles) adopted Brooklyn accents that shouldn’t have worked but did. The choice assimilated a local context and genre—mafia stooges or hit men—without insisting that the audience mistake gimmick for theme. In 3.7, the Lord Mayor and Buckingham rallied the audience

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into backing Richard’s claim with marvelous energy and endurance, making Richard’s hypocrisy between two Bishops more enjoyable for an audience caught between its desire to assist or placate the cast by taking up the chant, and an equally natural desire to sit on its hands. The effect allowed the audience to experience ambivalence outside the fiction much like that necessitated by the figure within it. And in 5.3 the orations on the eve of battle were elegantly spliced together, making Richmond’s speech seem less pat than it is, raising his value in our eyes, and raising the stakes of a battle that can feel like a disappointing appendage to a play long since ended.

Of course, these decisions could not save the play’s latter half—not even Thompson could save the second half of Richard III, during which Shakespeare appears to have been preoccupied with something other than playwriting—but they allowed it to halt by us with a better grace. With the play doing Richard in before Richmond can, the Richard that clings to power can never match the one striving for it. But Thompson’s sincer-ity, along with Ingram’s, helped get the play to work longer than usual, and through spaces that it usually doesn’t. By resisting caricatures, even when the play suggested it was all right to deliver them, the production had something in the tank after Margaret’s prophesies had proved true. It’s a rare audience that doesn’t appear to rail inwardly at their watches to move faster once Hastings’s head is off. This audience didn’t seem bothered after the intermission. And it complimented the production further by hearing out the “three queens” (4.4), and even the further participation of Edward’s sons (5.3), without locating the fire exits. That is high, and deserved, praise.

While Richard III routinely sends audiences away disappointed by a play more famous than good, The Winter’s Tale tends to work conversely, laying a banquet before guests expecting liver for dinner. Shakespeare & Company flipped the script this year, pairing its uncommonly vi-able Richard with a production of The Winter’s Tale that fell flat, despite abundant evidence of technical and artistic competence. The production began with real promise. Attractive, unfussy sets suggesting nineteenth-century Europe and a carefully blended palette of costume colors set a tone of unaffected elegance. An early series of exquisite stage pictures, each quietly evolving from the action, amplified it. In fact, the syntax of bodies throughout the production was graceful, and the movement consistently well-motivated—neither a strength of the stronger Richard III. Bill Barclay’s original music was good, too, and the principal actors,

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Jonathan Epstein (Leontes) and Elizabeth Aspenlieder (Hermione), showed unmistakable talent. So it was surprising that so much compe-tence didn’t amount to more.

What Kevin G. Coleman and his cast appeared to struggle with were their prejudices against the play—or, perhaps more fairly, the prejudices they seemed to anticipate in others. In various ways the production gave out the feeling that the play needed improving, that audiences would find it more appetizing if it were candied over with artistry, made subservi-ent to elaborations on its comic bits, or pared down past recognition. Coleman didn’t apologize for the play with overbearing concepts—this production, too, focused on its actors—but he did offer a subtler excuse by allowing the principal actors to draw attention to themselves rather than to the characters they portrayed.

Epstein’s meditative and unusually controlled Leontes is the most important example. His performance was demonstrably laudable—he understood what he said and was easily understood, was good on his feet, intense and sometimes funny—and playgoers went away rightly convinced they had seen a great actor. However, his Leontes came off as if the stakes of the plot were always secondary to his delivery. Epstein saddled each line with significant pauses, not only insisting on time for each line to land, but also on rendering the pauses meaningful in their own right. His jealousy in 1.2 evolved as much from the spaces between words as from the words, and he didn’t think aloud so much as pronounce conclusions about thoughts that clearly remained within.

What Epstein got of Leontes seemed only to come as an accidental product of his technique. He could make the audience feel things, but the feelings didn’t necessarily relate to the situation. The audience admired the actor but was never able to mistake him for doing something other than acting. You would notice that he was acting, that he was good at it, and then, lo and behold, that the things he was saying went with the situation in which he was demonstrating his skill. There were high points, as when Leontes took up a paper airplane Mamillius had left onstage and nervously twisted it into a dagger, timing its completion with “Affection! Thy intention stabs the center.” But such moments served chiefly to af-firm the intelligence behind a product that kept falling short. Epstein’s interior focus sometimes distracted him from interactions with the other characters; he looked past Mamillius and Paulina early, and repeatedly failed to notice Polixenes—who did everything short of ignite flares to get attention—in the fifth act. However justifiable the choice to remain aloof, it sunk his fellow actors—and the audience.

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In support of his levelheaded Leontes, Coleman compromised the script, and, ultimately, the character. He cut anything whose meaning might prove difficult, as well as many shifts of subject and metaphor that help affirm Leontes’s racing, random, yet improbably coherent logic through the play’s first hour. He relieved much of the pressure Leontes places on his syntax, allowing us to follow along easily, but withholding the theatrically productive difficulty of keeping up with a mind diseased. An actor cannot convince us that his jealousy is well founded here by lingering over the lack of evidence for it. He is more convincing when possessed, acting as a conduit for language that pours forth in torrents. The effect of the elisions went further for Epstein, an actor committed to speaking verse as verse, and who speaks it capably. The continuous paring often left him speaking freshly wrought prose as verse, sacrificing larger rhythms running across whole speeches for suddenly non-metrical lines. In the end, the audience got an imposter that it knew how to appreciate, but an imposter just the same.

The cuts were in many ways the story of the production, and their impact on Hermione and Polixenes was as debilitating. Aspenlieder’s

(From left to right) Malcolm Ingram as a Gaoler, Elizabeth Aspenlieder as Hermione, Jonathan Epstein as Leontes, and Jason Asprey as the Court Officer in Shakespeare & Company’s 2010 production of The Winter’s Tale, directed by Kevin G. Coleman. Photo courtesy of Kevin Sprague.

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Hermione had great moments—two of her set speeches in the trial scene were breathtaking, as was her air of noble resignation at “The Emperor of Russia was my father.” But her part was trimmed at every turn, which, with her too rigid hold on some formal principles for speaking verse, left her to eke out several rhythms with dead air, until the gaps began to dictate a rhythm to the production—she and some others left to piece out the play with pregnant silences. In the end, the cuts served the im-probable purpose of slowing the play down. Johnny Lee Davenport’s Polixenes extended the metrical trouble by introducing a frightening number of syllables of unknown authorship, perhaps in response to the syllabic attrition. Davenport also worked at getting attention the play would not give him—much of his early exchange with Camillo was played like soliloquy that helped withhold attention from the situation in which the actor participates in favor of the actor. He—along with most of the ensemble—worked almost exclusively in prose, creating a variation on the theme of intelligible but unsatisfying speeches, and advertising, by contrast, the artifice of Epstein and Aspenlieder’s technique.

Dana Harrison (top) as Mopsa and Leia Espericueta (bottom) as Dorcas, with Scott Renzoni, Doug Seldin, Corinna May, Andy Talen, and Enrico Spada as Shepherds and Shepherdess behind, in Shakespeare & Company’s 2010 pro-duction of The Winter’s Tale, directed by Kevin G. Coleman. Photo courtesy of Kevin Sprague.

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Though smart and admirably restrained performances by Malcolm Ingram and Wolfe Coleman, as the Shepherd and his son, deserve to be singled out, the production’s many understated weaknesses clamored for attention and supremacy in the fourth act. Jason Asprey’s Autolycus took over as a brooding central figure—here a disaffected artist-type. Like Le-ontes, he rendered the plot sluggish and of secondary importance to bits that had little to do with his part. That comparison is not entirely fair to Epstein in the first three acts, but it is not far off. Polixenes graduated to direct-address (at “This is the prettiest low-born lass”), further inserting himself between the audience and the subject of his speech. The sheep-shearing feast was cut to ribbons, but what remained was made entirely subservient to the fight between Mopsa and Dorcas, who appeared to go ten rounds for the Bohemian title. Meanwhile Perdita was forced to the wings to discuss botany, and line after line made way for festive songs aimed at assuring the audience what a good time it was having. Polix-enes’s angry revelation was trimmed and otherwise tempered in favor of the emergent romp. And the production even sacrificed an ugly echo of Leontes’s crimes against his children in favor of having Polixenes beat Florizel with his hat. Suffice to say that anyone beaten with a hat is in no danger of being disinherited.

The production couldn’t recover in the final act. The reunion with Perdita in 5.1 fell victim to the king of notable pauses; and drastic cuts to 5.2, along with dividing the part of Paulina’s steward among several actors, lessened the anxiety the audience ought to have felt at missing the reunion of the kings, thereby sapping the energy from one of the play’s best scenes, and failing to set up adequately the reunion with Hermione in 5.3. The flatness of the two scenes may have contributed to an audi-ence that was merely attentive to 5.3, rather than moved by it. Again, all the old signs of competence were present—the stage picture was striking, as was the hammered dulcimer that woke Hermione to life—but the positives cemented the impression that the production ought to have delivered more than it did. While Leontes remained easy to track, and even to admire, he proved incapable of making other actors better, and of modeling something of the appreciation the audience might hold for the statue of Hermione. Instead he drew us to himself, and the result, when Hermione stepped from her pedestal, was a house as dry-eyed as any I can remember.

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