Betrayed by Nerves
Richard II
Royal Shakespeare Company
The Observer
My ears may have deceived me, but almost my first impression at Tuesday’s premiere of Richard II (Aldwych) was of Alan Howard in the title role addressing his uncle Gaunt as ‘old John of York, time-time-honoured Lancaster,’ a dynastic confusion that if spotted in the time might have prevented the War of the Roses.
As the evening progresses Mr Howard did other weird things to the text; sometimes, after a misplaced word or omitted line, you could see him worrying about whether the speech would still make sense of whether the audience would notice. (It didn’t, and neither of course did they).
These temporary aberrations jibed uncannily with what seems to be Mr Howard’s abiding view of Richard: a man who regards kingship as a license to say and do outrageous, even meaningless things, and get applauded for them, but is cripplingly uncertain as to whether he can carry it off. This Richard insults Gaunt on his death-bed as if he were doing a turn, then turns to Bushy, Bagot and company apparently asking ‘Didn’t I do well?’
The nervousness betrays him. Before he has said a word, true or false, we see him in this production trying on his crown with an expression of fascinated distaste; plainly he is not getting job-satisfaction but he also sees no prospects in alternative employment. Then he turns to confront an impassive row of courtiers. (Gaunt is actually sitting down; you have to be really time-honoured to get away with that).
The ensuing scene, the quarrel between Bolingbroke and Mowbray, is brilliantly handled. Richard is almost in control, unleashing contempt on both contestants from behind a mask of royal raillery. David Suchet’s Bolingbroke is playing his own version of the same game, unwearyingly polite to his king while plainly hating him.
The development in counterpoint of these two performances is the great strength of Terry Hand’s production. Bolingbroke’s ambition dawns as Richard banishes him: ‘such is the breath of kings.’
When Richard is virtually his prisoner he sends an ultimatum beginning grandiloquently with his own name: ‘Henry Bolingbroke…’ - here for Mr Suchet breaks off for a moment, bemused and excited. (Hark at me, I’m talking royal). He has found himself; but so far an ironic moment has Richard, in the ‘hollow crown’ speech which cast a silence over the house of a different quality from the respectful hush which otherwise prevails. You understand why Richard is so angry at being diverted from his sweet road to despair; for him it has been the true meaning of kingship. All that remains is to teach it to Bolingbroke, which he does in the deposition scene, loading him with regalia, teasing him on the throne.
The legacy is felt through the remainder of Mr Suchet’s performance; the atrocious couplets of his last scene (‘thy pains, Fitzwater, shall not be forgot/right noble is thy spirit, well I wot’) are delivered as if in a daze, which is doubtless how they are written. But though Bolingbroke can reasonably be played to the end as a political case-study, Richard, like it or lump it, is a tragic hero; and his deeper triumph ‘in being nothing’ is one that this production has no room for.
It is otherwise distinguished by the friezes of Farrah’s set, a lament for the passing of the Middle Ages, and by variously effective stabs at comedy. The best are in Tony Church’s York, though even he is too knowingly conversational at times; more open to quested are the gardeners’ sending-up of the Queen, and Northumberland’s rattling-off of the names of his conspirators, perhaps in settlement of a dressing-room bet. At such moments I wonder whether current Shakespeare is much improvement on, say, the Old Vic of 1959 was pretty good.