Richard II

by William Shakespeare

seen at the Bridge Theatre on 27 February 2025

Nicholas Hytner directs Jonathan Bailey as the eponymous king with Royce Pierreson as Henry Bullingbroook (sic.) in a production designed by Bob Crowley and lit by Bruno Poet.

This is the fifth production of Richard II I have seen since beginning this blog and, true to form, it is quite different from all the others: proof, if any were needed, of the capacity for intelligent reinterpretation afforded by many of Shakespeare's greatest plays.

Performed on a long thrust stage initially bare, but with parts of the floor able to be sunk in order to set and remove furniture as required, the production is in modern dress, entirely subdued in greys and blacks. Stripped of the gorgeous medieval finery often used in honour of the Wilton diptych (which features a portrait of Richard II as a sacral king), all attention is on the language and on how the characters relate to one another in political and personal terms. The result is fascinating, the power plays surprisingly modern, and Richard's self-absorption entirely credible, rarely descending into self-pity.

Jonathan Bailey is a superb Richard, speaking the verse with unerring musicality, and he is surrounded by an excellent supporting cast even if none of the others quite rise to his level of delivery. Bullingbrook is something of a cipher, not obviously irritated with his cousin's theatrics in the deposition scene, but instead impassively prepared to indulge him. But he upholds his rights earlier in the play with conviction and hence gains the support he needs to press his claims and ultimately to become the new king.

Two of the major scenes involving women have been cut: the dialogue between John of Gaunt and his widowed sister-in-law the Duchess of Gloucester; and the famous "gardener" scene in which Queen Isabel overhears commoners discussing the disaster befalling her husband. This streamlines the play, and puts heightened emphasis on the poignant but brief scene in which Richard and Isabel are parted. The only other woman featured is the Duchess of York (Amanda Root); her frantic support for her errant young son Aumerle (Vinnie Heaven) is beautifully staged, providing some light relief from the increasing tension without tipping over into parody. (The Bishop of Carlisle here was female, the only concession to gender-blind casting, which in the modern context was effective.)

The staging was excellent; from the gallery to one side I never felt that I was being deprived of good views of the actors or being presented with a badly skewed vista of the production - indeed it would be interesting to see the play from the front as it were, to gauge whether there was a significantly different effect: in the deposition scene, conducted like a commission of enquiry or a court hearing, Bullingbrook sat for some time with his back to those sitting at the 'front', rendering him even more inscrutable at this point.

In the modern setting there were some clever adjustments. The joust between Bullingbrook and Thomas Mowbray is prepared for in all its formality, but rather than being a cumbersome affair in full armour (possibly on horseback) it is re-imagined as a bare-knuckled fight - bare-chested too - in a pit conveniently created in the versatile stage floor. The visceral rivalry between the two noblemen is thus given a macho physicality barely contained when Richard intervenes to stop the fight.

Richard himself speaks with authority but comes dangerously close to losing face as he interrupts the 'joust'. His fitness to rule is more seriously put into question for us in the scene with his favourites, who are lounging together and snorting cocaine, a very modern but all too plausible indication of their unfitness to govern the realm. They and Richard are obviously still high when visiting the dying John of Gaunt, so that the king's assumption of Gaunt's revenues is enacted in a drug-fuelled haze as the king lolls on the old man's vacated sickbed. Yet despite the hedonism, the king is for the moment still the king and none can gainsay him.

Richard in his last scene is contemplative and vulnerable. As part of the editing of the play for this production, his murderer was evidently Bagot (a former crony) rather than the named new character Exton, but nothing was made of this being a final example of betrayal. At least this was a more credible directorial choice than having Aumerle (a cousin of the two kings) perform the deed, as has been done elsewhere, something that would have been beneath him. Shockingly the corpse was presented to Henry IV in a body bag, undisclosed but a fateful reminder of the guilt which would overshadow the new king in the subsequent plays.