Paola Teresa Grassi

Shakespeare theatre is living matter in the hands of time, and whether that is true, Thomas Ostermeier Richard III is an impeccable measure of the present time. Ultracontemporary adaptation of a Shakespearean `décor`, set up `within` the Schaubüne Berlin — or, to put it as Time out does, `the coolest theatre in the world`, the same impressive setting was recreated at the Opéra Grand Avignon in 2015.

It is one perfect circle of dust, whose design terminates in a backcloth capturing some sort of neglected industrial estate into a double tiered iron and cement structure. Underneath a note of urban minimalism, details of a discrete splendour, though, are hidden. A Persian carpet hangs as an arras-door, and golden confetti lay on the soon to be a bloody ground, — shining in the mastery of light.

Scattered around in the almost operatic overture by the actors coming on from the parterre, electronic music, entrusted to one drummer on stage, introduces the court. Integrated in an insolently glamorous manner, this Gloucester does not whisper his `discontent` in the shadow. He is not disgusting, and his disfigurements are actually beautiful.

Dashing, in black and white, a leather cap, a plaster on one hand, braces on his teeth, one big clownish foot, a silver band, he stands out immediately as iconic when he gets to an old fashion microphone swinging in the air from a malformed cable, perhaps a never cut umbilical cord. A diseased dynasty it will be of Richmond’s destiny to annihilate.

This Gloucester is seducing. This is how the director wanted him, — found him, in the unbelievable Lars Eldinger, to get into an intimate relationship with the audience, laughing at his jokes, even the most indecent ones. Video emphasises his smiley face, a childish misty-eyed smile, whose tears tell the story of a never completely born body.

Impossible not to love him. Especially when Margaret, his mother, — a role entrusted to a man in a familiar tabloid hairdo, curses him. It’s an `erotica of power` at stake here, which has in beauty its metacritic keystone. Lady Anne’s beauty, mourning on his father’s coffin, and he prompting it as a confession which turns her pain into sensual euphoria while he poses naked, a sword against his chest.

Not just the small scene details disclose that splendour underneath minimalism, but words too. Emphasized in the most intense soliloquies of the Canon, — in English, associated to techno-rock fragments, and in video underlined further through fluid images, and aerial shots: a sky with vultures, the land of England, soon to be reunited in white and red.

Not before having navigated the dense plot line of Richard’s mind, as in the sinuous rivers cutting through that land. One thick net of cheerful manipulations: Buckingham, cousins — reduced to ventriloquist dummies, Lord mayor and citizens of London. The umbilical microphone as the direct connection to the audience deciding for the key question of the play: Do we really want Richmond to win?

No. Not here. Not even when all the victims stand one behind the other into the dream before the battle, when King Richard’s face turns white — Elizabethan in his becoming reign, throne. There he sleeps, and in the half-sleep whispers his final call. No horse comes, though, and the last hand-to-hand is fought solo against his invisible nemesis. Until he rests, hanged by the foot, cutting the cord.

`The Devil does not wear Prada`.

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Seen in streaming on April 3, 2020

First YPS — Young People’s Shakespeare, production, The Comedy of Errors dated 2009, — available for rent on Digital Theatre, launched a RSC project aiming at bringing together established actors from the main company, and directors from other companies, — here Paul Hunter and Hayley Carmichael of Told by an Idiot to promote the Canon among children, or: `young people`.

This condensed 80-minute version of the play for a Key Stage 2 audience, — here captured live at the Clapham Community Project, came out as a lighthearted, while impeccable in semantic, feast of ‘errands’. Flamboyant narrative made of improvisation — here in its perfect `soil` of interaction with the little `watered` spectators, and a chorus of instruments and voices navigating through the original lines of a `slapstick physical romance`.

Cinematic references to The Royal Tennenbaums, — the two `Antipholuses` dressed up as a twins version of Richie Tennenbaum, unforgettable hairy, headbanded, tennis prodigy in dark glasses, beige blazer, and the two `Dromios` as a twins version of Chas Tennenbaum, unique — as it is in this particular pair, widowed tycoon in a fuzzy red tracksuit, set the scene into some New York courtyard on a clumsy Summer day.

Something klezmer in the music resonates, and a Ghost Buster black T-shirt is the pop `code` which welcomes into the spirits’ world one enters once the hall turns into a theatre through a wide square wood board, the schoolchildren on the ground seated all around. This is the whole of an urban, bewitched Ephesus, and if one listens closely, one might even hear a sirene on the distance.

The duke is a small hoodlum running his small portion of the city, and his jails are so small, Egeon the Syracusan (David Carr) is kept into an unplugged refrigerator. Fate runs the plot through a `golden chain` of misidentifications, `madness`, — a pace juggling piece-in-the-piece on ‘The man is mad’ tune, `magic`— `Sure, these are but imaginary wiles, and Lapland sorcerers inhabit here`, and money.

Emilia — priory’s abbess, anticipates the happy ending with a tap dancing interlude, while all falls into place, aided by spoon-playing, and a baloons-extravaganza: `Dromio, Dromio, wherefore art thou Dromio`. No nuptial promises are set on stage, but a binding closure is foreseen. Finger to finger, as in a cruel mirror, the real world recalls, but a smile the faerie tale has lent us, and will not be forgotten.

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