King Richard II (Michael Urie, center) and his queen (Lux Pascal, left front) hang out in a sauna with courtiers (from left) Bushy (Sarin Monae West), Richard’s cousin Aumerle (David Mattar Merten), and Bagot (Ryan Spahn).
The Red Bull Theater production of Shakespeare’s Richard II (1595) is welcome, if only because it is so rarely staged. A Public Theater production scheduled for 2020 was presented online because of COVID; the last Delacorte production was in 1987. In the 2000s, BAM has hosted two major British productions: with Ralph Fiennes in 2000 and David Tennant in 2016.
John of Gaunt (Ron Canada, left) rebukes his nephew Richard as the Queen looks on.
For Red Bull, director Craig Baldwin has adapted the play to “1980s, America, and medieval England, too.” The decade of the AIDS crisis foregrounds the coded homosexuality of the play: Shakespeare lists the characters Bushy, Bagot, and Greene as favorites. That term harks back to Christopher Marlowe’s 1593 Edward II, about a British king with a high-profile gay lover, Piers Gaveston. In the opening speech, Marlowe’s Gaveston says: “What greater bliss can hap to Gaveston / Than live and be the favorite of a king.” In both Marlowe and Shakespeare, that sentiment proves wrong.
To increase the female performers, Baldwin converts the dukes of York and Northumberland to duchesses (Kathryn Meisle and Emily Swallow, respectively)—tough and modern, and perhaps more interesting for it. More important, there is a frame on the action. It begins with Michael Urie’s Richard, seated in a rotating metal frame with one Plexiglas side that serves as his cell, opening the play with Richard’s Act V soliloquy: “I have been studying how I may compare / This prison where I live unto the world.” Urie’s moving delivery draws empathy for Richard, whose misrule begins the Wars of the Roses. In the original he is greedy, petulant, and unlikable for a long while, gaining one’s sympathy only late in the play.
Henry Bolingbroke (Grantham Coleman, left) returns from exile with an army, helped by the ruthless Duchess of Northumberland (Emily Swallow).
The adaptation then flashes back—as Richard reviews his life postmortem—to Act I and a scene between John of Gaunt (Richard’s uncle, played by Ron Canada) and Northumberland before landing on Shakespeare’s opening scene, where two courtiers are at odds. Richard’s cousin Henry Bolingbroke (Grantham Coleman), Gaunt’s son, accuses Thomas Mowbray, the Duke of Norfolk (Daniel Stewart Sherman, who also plays Scroop), of being “a traitor and a miscreant”; Mowbray says Bolingbroke is “a slanderous coward and a villain.” Neither relents, so trial by combat ensues. Baldwin stages it energetically as a televised stadium event with Bushy (Sarin Monae West), costumed by Rodrigo Muñoz to evoke Grace Jones, as announcer.
Elsewhere, Baldwin relocates a routine court scene to a sauna, where Richard and his favorites loll en déshabillé. Richard is particularly chummy with his first cousin Aumerle (by his aunt, the Duchess of York). Their frequent passionate kisses reveal them as more than kin. (A helpful program guide shows the houses of Lancaster and York and where Richard fits in.)
King Richard (right) and his cousin Aumerle share an intimate moment in the Red Bull production. Photographs by Carol Rosegg.
Baldwin makes some questionable plot changes, notably that Richard’s murderer is not the ambitious court functionary Exton but Aumerle (David Mattar Merten), which shifts the emphasis from political assassination to personal betrayal. Aumerle embraces the assassin’s role to ingratiate himself with Bolingbroke, but the conversion feels unconvincing and imposed on the text.
Modernization brings mistakes, too: it’s unimaginable that Sherman’s burly Scroop (transmuted from archbishop to uniformed military officer) would envelop his divinely anointed king in a bear hug—not apropos of the Middle Ages or the 1980s. Even for a Richard who’s loosey-goosey with his courtiers, it’s a bridge too far. Shakespeare can withstand rough handling, however, and it will be up to viewers who know the play to decide when a line is crossed; for newbies, perhaps it won’t matter.
Throughout there are sporadic visual pleasures, such as a disco party with Jeanette Oi-Suk Yew’s lights forming flashing grids of pink, red, and yellow. More often, though, the background is black, and the speakers stand isolated in pools of light.
The Queen and Bagot take the sun in a garden.
Baldwin’s production—which does help clarify what can be muddled political factions—also features a generally high order of verse speaking. The language is skillfully handled, from Gaunt’s famous “This earth, this realm, this England” to most of the smaller parts. As for Urie, he has a gift for putting an amusing spin on lines that don’t readily seem laughable, and his Richard is a highly performative character. But he has a tendency to overdo telling glances and extravagant gestures that provide a grin or a laugh; by the end, the habit becomes wearying. It robs Richard of some gravitas that he needs as a fully tragic character.
Still, Richard II tells the story of the doomed king relatively clearly, despite its gender changes and updating. Lest it be another 25 years before a major production comes along, it may be worth catching it now.
The Red Bull Theater’s Richard II runs through Nov. 30 at the Astor Place Theatre (434 Lafayette St.). Evening performances are at 7 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday; matinees are at 2 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. For tickets and more information, visit redbulltheater.com.
Playwright: William Shakespeare
Direction & Adaptation: Craig Baldwin
Scenic Design: Arnulfo Maldonado
Costume Design: Rodrigo Muñoz
Lighting Design: Jeanette Oi-Suk Yew
Sound Design & Original Music: Brandon Wolcott
