Richard III (or tricky Dick)

Possibly the most difficult ticket to get in London these days is Richard III, starring Kevin Spacey.  They've been sold out for ages, but as is the practice, you can show up a few hours ahead of the opening time and wait for return tickets.  It was a beautiful day in London, so after a quick trip to visit the ever-growing shrine in front of Amy Winehouse's home, I headed down to Waterloo to wait.  After an hour, I managed to score a seat with a partial view on the very top of the Lilian Bayliss Circle, or as I know them, the nose-bleeds.   Since the returns are handed out minutes before the show, I wasn't able to scoot into my seat until about 20 minutes into the performance, which meant the opening monologue was viewed as a giant shadow cast on the stage right wall.  And that was actually really effective.  Richard, appearing bigger than he is in a paper crown and party horn, withered hand and hunched back.  Ever the villain.

Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this son of Sam Mendes.  What started out as a very angry cross between Verbal Kent and Groucho Marx (both playing on the physical limitations of the hunchback) ended as a very well rendered character. One who had dreamed of a blue sky destiny,  and sought to make it so in spite of the trail of destruction let behind.

He woos, successfully he boasts, the new widow of his former adversary, whom he has just slain.  She agrees to marry him even as the corpse bleeds anew at the very presence of Richard.  (Which was visible and pretty cool.)  He one by one has all his brothers and his brother's children killed to ensure the throne belongs to him.  And in a masterful scene, prompts Buckingham, playing the scene as if a lively Southern Baptist preacher, to sway the crowd who responds, thanks to plants in the audience, with the appropriate boos, yays, and "Tell it, brother!"  The un-planted audience soon follows and the crowd cheers the idea of Richard becoming king over the young Prince Edward.  Richard is seen on a huge monitor with two accomplices playing monks.  We see him in prayer as he morns for his brothers' deaths.  He turns to the camera, reacting to Buckingham and the crowd with mock humility, saying he couldn't possibly be king.  It's not his place, after all.  He isn't kingly enough.  And this is where we love Spacey most.  For in spite of his mastery of the language and his spirited stage performance, it is the subtlety of his expressions, the tiny curl at the corner of his lip as the crowd begs him to take the throne, that fully demonstrate the mastery of his craft.  Soon, the upstage wall is pulled to reveal an even deeper stage, full of doors which are marked with an X as the new King's options become more limited, or those around him die, or are executed.  As the last moment of the 2 hours first half, we see Richard take the throne with clear defiance and pride.


In the second half, gone are the Groucho asides (I wasn't kidding about that - he is due to the hunchback bent over in a very Groucho way).  Now we see Richard as an increasingly neurotic, screaming character, killing off all his remaining relatives and friends out of sheer paranoia, until in the final battle, he doesn't even have a horse.  He even repeatedly stabs the head (which was in a box, but visible from the nose-bleeds) of one of his men with his cane in anger out of what he sees as treason and betrayal.  After a really solid dual with broadswords with Richmond, he is slain and hoisted up by his feet so that he hangs in the air as a shell of his tyrannical power.


And curtain call!  We see an extremely exhausted Spacey, thanking the crowd and his fellow actors, but just absolutely exhausted.

As I walked out, I heard people talking about how the American accents bothered them.  While there were several Americans in the cast, they did the usual effected speech.  The English patrons asked each other, "why bother?  Just pick one - full English or American."

I made my way to the stage door in an attempt to get some autographs and see Kevin Spacey.  I did meet a few of the actors, but after 45 minutes, the stage hand announced that Kevin had left through another exit.  And so, I took my leave.