This production marks the end of Michael Grandage's acclaimed tenure as the artistic director of this theatrical powerhouse. During the past ten years his team at the Donmar have produced some of the most evocative and emotional productions in London, attracting mega star actors and most of London's illustrious audience along the way. He's returned to Shakespeare again and again, with the Jude Law starring Hamlet, and Derek Jakobi featuring King Lear forging a distinctive style that has quietly stepped away from the major trends in modern Shakespeare productions. Rather than encasing the plays in a concept or period, Grandage has chosen to set them in timeless places, focusing on the feel, language, and pace of the plays. His controversial cuts (his King Lear was under 3 hours) give the plays a succinct feel that heightens the personal drama, while his close knit creative team (including the multi-award winning sound designer Adam Cork and widely heralded Christopher Oram) constantly produce an evocative environment.
Richard II continues this trend, with the usual Grandage features marked throughout the production. It's almost unbearably intimate as we watch Redmayne's young king fall from praised king to hunted subject over the course of Shakespeare's five versed acts. I've never seen Richard II before, and apart from a quick read through at university, I wasn't completely clued up on the plot, production history, and themes, before hand. Grandage's great skill as a director is to make Shakespeare's often dense, multi-layered plots transparent. Throughout the play the central strands of the drama, from Richard's fall, to Bolingbroke's revolt and victory, are lucid and clear. Without patronising you or resorting to the daft techniques that some other leading English Shakespeare directors use, he leads you through the different strands of the story, each scene beautifully played. In Grandage's hands, it's a joy to watch the story unfold in front of you.
Richard II holds an integral place in Shakespeare's oeuvre. It marks the beginning of the second tetralogy of history plays (Bolingbroke, now Henry IV, makes a reference to the succeeding Henry IV part 1, Henry IV part 2, and Henry V, at the end of the play), and fits in neatly around the time of Hamlet, Shakespeare's great reinvention of the tragic form, and As You Like It, a comedy that turns the idea of comedy on its headand began Shakespeare's long interrogation of theatrical genres.
Richard II fits into this trend, and the succeeding plays in the tetralogy also question historical documentation and the ideas of heroes and villains. It marked a shift from the more straightforward first tetralogy(encompassing the Henry VI trilogy, and Richard III) which owed a lot to morality drama and had more distinct ideas of moral codes and right and wrong. Richard II doesn't have these codes, and it picks apart our ideas of heroism. It's fantastically modern, thought provoking, and moving, forcing us to think about what makes a fit monarch, and a fit leader, which is aptly appropriate at a time when we are being forced to question the integrity of our own political leaders.
Since seeing this production Richard II has become one of my favourite Shakespeare plays, which is the biggest honour I can bestow on this production. I've found myself constantly flicking through passages of the play, trying to remember moments. By foregrounding the language, and beauty, of Richard II Grandage made the play superbly poignant and moving, a lament for a lost England, and a lament for a lost and naive king.
This production won't change the world, and it certainly isn't going to reinvent our ideas of the play, or how to perform Shakespeare in the modern world. But Grandage's quiet revolution at the Donmar has produced a string of beautiful productions that enrich the plays and preserve their peculiar genius, with Richard II a fitting end to this incredible legacy. Grandage's work is neither in the European or English model of modern Shaksespeare production, it exists alone, a solitary movement that delights audiences and actors alike.
Check out Richard II at the Donmar Warehouse until the fourth of February. It might be the last time we get to see such lucid and intimate Shakespeare productions in English for a long time.
Running Time: 2 Hours 40 minutes including a 15 minute interval after the first hour
Programme: £3 (Includes an interesting essay by Russell Jackson, a Birmingham University Professor, on Shakespeare's use of opposites in the play).
More Information: http://www.donmarwarehouse.com/pl133.html
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