Kate Mulvany IS Shakespeare’s Richard III. No need to read any further. Get your hands on a ticket now as they will become collectors’ items and in 5, 10, 20 years’ time when people speak of Mulvany’s performance, and they will, you will want to say you were there. Bell Shakespeare and Kate Mulvany bring RICHARD III spine- tinglingly alive at the Sydney Opera House.
Why Shakespeare’s Richard III? Since his carpark exhumation from the remains of Leicester’s Greyfriars Church in August 2012, the legacy reconstruction of the last king of the House of York, last of the Plantagenet dynasty is part of the zeitgeist. That man is not Shakespeare’s man. When he wrote it, Will was an early-career, jobbing actor and writer: politically and financially bound to sponsors. Sponsors like the Stanley Family who appear to great credit in a play designed to flatter one reputation by destruction of another.
In this 400 year old text, the Duke, Protector, King thereafter who must be brought to life is physically ‘misshapen’ and emotionally driven to ‘stand upon the hazard of the die’. Mulvany and Director Peter Evans have interrogated this, the second longest of the canon, and found in it the caustic humour and the slimy charm that allows real insight into the mind of this villain. Without the blood and gore implied and with delicious licence to secretly enjoy the malicious machinations of the unreconstructed Richard.
When we meet him first, the Duke of Gloucester is charming and just a little wicked as he pulls us into his inner circle. Brilliant technique in breaking of the fourth wall and outreaching as Mulvany has the audience in her hand. She is small and separate as ‘other’ as the protagonist is to his peers and family. When Richard’s real inner circle arrives in party mode, it is they who are halting, twitching, lame and bent. And Richard observes it all. He revels in their weaknesses and we through his eyes. Mulvany has us by the throat and will not let go until curtain fall.
In the press, Mulvany has been very forthright about her passion for the play. She has expressed her empathy with Richard’s physical impairment since her childhood cancer treatment has similarly affected her but this performance does not strip Richard down to just the physical. Mind you, the transformation is astonishing. What Mulvany’s Richard III does is to mine into the Realpolitik … the how of his success against the odds before his paranoia fells the curtain of his black heart. Why Lady Anne marries him, why Buckingham is in his corner, why the Bishop of Ely and others believe in his humble devotion to matters spiritual when we can see he is venal to the core.
In the monologues, Mukvany looks out at the audience as friends to comment on his doings but more excitingly conspiratorial is when she stares out at us as he slumps in a chaise, or perches eagle-like on chair. His moues of distaste and his lascivious enjoyment of the discomfiture of the court are Kevin Spacey talking to the camera. Powerful, wonderful theatre.
The supporting cast are also excellent. Designed as floating characters, they merge and morph, die and are restored as something else. As Lady Anne, Rose Riley is an excellent object of desire, as Meredith Penman as Queen Elizabeth is the vicious and unbowed thorn in his side. Good support also from Sarah Woods as the Duchess of York, their mother/son meeting is just thrilling. The thrust and parry as she cows to him and he regroups is as exciting as swordplay.
The characters are caught in a room. It’s undeniably British. These party-goers occasionally sing. The most English of bodies, the Women’s Institute, are evoked with Jerusalem and the religious overtones of Abide with Me go unremarked upon. The program however speaks of indeterminate time but there is enough Art Deco in the rich set to resonate bright young things in a period when turmoil is around.
It’s sumptuous to watch and subtle in its use. Bloody Richard eats red licorice and strawberries with relish, the wall upstage has a ‘brittle glass’ army for Richard’s sensuous pleasure. It’s even complete with demitasse cups and Richard, with a porcelain teapot, playing mother while slyly peeping at the audience.
The curves of plush furniture are counterpointed with gold lines in walls and the mantle and the salmon, apricot, peach and burgundy palette is resonated in the dinner attire and in warm lighting with crystal wall sconces and black table lamps.
The audio track gently carries an audience to the emotion. It builds for Queen Margaret’s, well played by Sandy Gore, triumphantly antagonistic return and it is long, expressive and mournful as the murder of Clarence looms. There is even a crackly, gramophone redolent Lena Horne’s Stormy Weather distantly at interval.
Built in to the set, high above the action, is a representation of an early television set. The fuzzy, mute,cathode ray images are from the dumb waiter in the opposite wall and both objects stand as comment. Red and white roses in a bouquet, a blood-soaked shroud or the decaying head of an enemy creep into the consciousness of the viewer.
If you can tear your attention away from Mulvany.
Bell Shakespeare’s RICHARD III is everything you want in a Shakespeare and it will be a production that lives well beyond its mortal existence. It will live large in Australia’s theatrical history. Don’t miss it.
RICHARD III continues at The Playhouse, Sydney Opera House until March 31.