Direct from a sold-out run in London's West End, the critically-beloved, Shakespeare's Globe productions of Twelfth Night and Richard III come to Broadway for a 16-week limited engagement. Two of The Bard's finest plays are performed in repertory by a remarkable cast featuring two-time Tony Award winner Mark Rylance (Jerusalem, Boeing-Boeing), Golden Globe nominee Stephen Fry (Wilde, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows) and Tony Award nominee Samuel Barnett (The History Boys).
These classics are presented in the custom of how Shakespeare's plays were originally staged, with an extraordinary all-male company playing male and female roles; actors participating in the pre-show ritual of dressing and preparing their make-up on stage, in front of the audience; music played live on traditional instruments; and lighting created almost exclusively by 100 on-stage candles, adding to the intimate and authentic atmosphere. This is delightfully funny, timeless Shakespeare at its absolute finest, and it is not to be missed!
Richard Duke of Gloucester (Mark Rylance) is determined that he should wear the crown of England. He has already dispatched one king and that king's son; now all that stands in his way are two credulous brothers and two helpless nephews - the Princes in the Tower. And woe betide those - the women he wrongs; the henchmen he betrays - who dare to raise a voice against him. Monstrous, but theatrically electric, Richard is Shakespeare's most charismatic, self-delighting villain, reveling at every moment in his homicidal, hypocritical journey to absolute power.
Rylance is also the comic engine of Richard III, but the success of that unusual choice is more equivocal. Certainly Richard is amused by his own depravity; after murdering Lady Anne’s husband and father, and prettily getting her to marry him anyway, he instantly gloats: “Was ever woman in this humour woo’d? / Was ever woman in this humour won?” But Rylance takes from such cues an idea of Richard as a grotesque glad-hander, an audience whisperer of Al Jolson proportions. He grubs for laughter, plays up his self-pitying streak as a ruse we are all in on. He’s perfectly happy to pimp his deformity, here rendered as a slightly warped leg and a tiny withered hand hanging from a palsied wrist like a brace of deflated balloons. You may think of Kristen Wiig’s demented Dooneese Boylan character.
There are many insults hurled at the hunched back of Richard of Gloucester (later to game his way to the throne as Richard III): Most of the taunts are animal-based (toad, boar, dog). No one, however, calls him a dummy. In Mark Rylance’s innovative, sickly comic turn, Richard simpers like a royal family’s idiot son. Dull-eyed and slack-jawed, the wretch’s withered left arm is pinned to his side, the paralyzed hand the size of a toddler’s (the actor wears a repulsive prosthetic). Of course, the I, Claudius act is just a front for bloody ambition. Richard is always good for a few nasty chuckles, but Rylance clowns it up shamelessly. His apish glee upon seducing the mourning Lady Anne (Joseph Timms) is almost infectious. And his shrimpy skittering is contrasted nicely by Angus Wright’s strapping, manly Buckingham, the lord who helps Richard murder and slander his way to the crown.
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2014 | New York Drama Critics Circle Awards | Special Citation | 0 |
2014 | Tony Awards | Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Play | Mark Rylance |
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