Let’s get the boring stuff done first: Richard III is generally acknowledged as one of Shakespeare’s earliest plays. The first known reference to it is in the early 1590s and it is included in the1597 First Folio where it is placed with the histories. However, in the First Quarto, published later that year, it is listed as a tragedy. It is the longest of the texts in these publications exceeding the notoriously abridged version of Hamlet which is included therein. Hamlet, in later publications, becomes the longest play in the canon thereby leaving Richard III languishing in second place. That’s assuming that size matters, of course. 

The fact that one publication lists the text as a history and another as a tragedy should always make us question the authenticity of Shakespeare’s plot and characters. At least, this should always be a consideration when deciding how to present the work. Was Shakespeare himself being political when he wrote this deeply political work? Maybe he was. His Richard is, after all, the one most people cite when they reflect upon this Rose-centred era rather than the one of more carefully researched historical record. 

Richard III is also acknowledged as one of the truly great plays in the Shakespearean repertoire despite full productions being rare. Uncut productions are rarer still. 

Not that Shakespeare is boring, and Richard Crookback never so. How could any actor resist playing a character described by another as an “elvish-mark’d, abortive, rooting hog.” It’s just not possible.

So, before this production opens it already has an awful lot going for it and despite the obvious irony contained in the opening reference to “this sun of York” while black Auckland clouds threateningly “lour’d” upon the plaza of the Owen G Glenn Business School there was a hum of expectation from the small group of hardy souls who braved the earlier rain to engage in this rare experience. Reference here must be made to the exceptional service provided by the front of house personnel who busied themselves providing dry seats and large summer brollies for the comfort of the audience, and all with a cheerful smile. Most appreciated. 

The earliest production of Richard III that I can recall in New Zealand was that produced at Theatre Corporate in 1978 and directed by Raymond Hawthorne. It won’t be the first but it is the first I can recall. This production saw Selwyn Crockett as Richard and Paul Gittens as Buckingham. Gittens reappears with the play but this time as director in a 1991 Pumphouse Theatre production with Michael Hurst as Richard and Hurst reappears with this University of Auckland Summer Shakespeare production as Artistic Supervisor; he is also a member of the trust that oversees these productions and his expert hand is all over it! 

More recently, February 2010 saw Richard III as the annual North Shore ‘Shakespeare in the Park production’. (It probably should be added that, in the early 1980’s, Downstage Theatre cancelled a planned production of Richard III with Roy Billing in the title role. That production was replaced by Michael Frayn’s Noises Off and few missed the poetic irony of that decision! 

The venue chosen for the 2011 University of Auckland Summer Shakespeare production is the plaza of the Owen G Glenn Business School. Unlike most previous University of Auckland Summer Shakespeare productions this isn’t in the lovely, outdoorsy, foresty environment beneath the clock tower but rather in a cold steel and frosty glass atmosphere of urban brutalism overseen by floor-upon-floor of impersonal office and corporate workspace, which is more than appropriate for this production with its impersonal modernity and heartless corporate hostility.

This is a ‘big screen’ production – literally – and the screen helps a lot. It’s worthy of note that the complex technicals essential to this production are handled very well indeed with unobtrusive camera operators allowing us right of entry in extreme close-up to those intimate moments that live theatre is seldom able to allow us access to. 

The set, dwarfed by the corporate backdrop, is a simple platform, accessed from the back and one side by steps, and on which there is a giant – and I mean whopping – metal framed chair, a standard-sized dining table, a couple of chairs and plenty of wine glasses. 

Onto this rain-sodden and be-puddled surface skulks Luke Thornborough’s Richard, “deformed, unfinished, sent before his time into this breathing world, scarce half made up” and he proceeds to engulf us in his villainous infamy for the following three hours. Happily he brings his Hamlet (a smidgeon of mad, angry nobility) and his Orlando (a drop of wit, vivacity, strength and naiveté} with him, for here is an actor of enormous ability. Blessed with a wonderful voice and splendid physicality, Thornborough owns the stage with a performance of subtlety and rare honesty, essential for the playing of this most duplicitous arch-villain; the real success of his creation evident in a frisson of sympathy that buzzed among the audience on his eventual demise.

Shakespeare, though, is far too clever to create a play that relies on one performance alone and, while many lesser productions have died of ‘one-man-band’ syndrome, this one does not.

Buckingham, played by Tama Boyle who has long been one of my favourite actors, is the perfect foil. Credible throughout, Boyle’s understated performance and moving downfall are, as always, perfectly placed and supportive of both text and production. This is nowhere better evidenced than in the spine-chilling moment when Buckingham claims recompense for his treachery only to hear Richard renege with a quietly vicious “we are not in the giving vein today.” This is excellent theatre! 

A delicious troika of women provide much of the conflict with Ghazaleh Golbakhsh as Queen Elizabeth most impressive and Romy Hooper (Queen Margaret) and Kaitlin McLeod (Lady Anne and a gender variant Ratcliffe) not far behind. 

The decision to cast women in the fiercely male roles of Hastings, Catesby, Ratcliffe and York is understandable but only partially successful, not because the women aren’t up to the task, but simply because Shakespeare has created roles driven by testosterone, mateship and a uniquely male form of self-interested rat cunning. Through these male characters, and in particular Lord Hastings, we see Richard’s villainy reflected in ways that cannot be otherwise replicated. 

Director Anya Varezhkina, with the support of Artistic Supervisor and Shakespeare supremo Michael Hurst, has built a powerful and well-spoken drama that truly does the bard justice. This is sublimely good story-telling but Richard III is much more than just a good story. Scene builds on scene, tension on tension, image on image and all the cast serve the play with a dedication that is laudable; so much so that, after three hours, the zenith of the play is reached and resolved in a manner that is both artistically and emotionally satisfying. As Richard lies dying one can almost hear a ghostly voice sigh in the distance, “Thank God, you knocked the bastard off!”

Is the production perfect? No, of course it isn’t. It’s Shakespeare and it’s outdoors, both variables that exist to trap the unprepared, but this cast and crew deals splendidly with the odd technical hiccup, and, on this occasion, the rain and the bitter cold. 

While some characters appear as mere ciphers they are unashamedly efficient ciphers and serve the forward movement of the plot as they should, and we can ask for no more than that. 

My other quibbles relate to interpretation and these are personal opinion and, as such, not especially relevant but hopefully interesting.

The choice to bring the play into today’s world must always be a vexed one as historic reference points and the opportunity to look at Richard’s time yet to reflect on our own is, to some extent, lost. In this case it works, just. 

Also lost – as much through the gender-variant casting as anything else – is a sense of the politics of the time; the mores, the fashions, the relationships and the humour. Does this matter? Does it make this production less rich that a more traditional one might have been? Not really. It just makes it different. It does, however, deny us the opportunity to reflect on the agelessness and universality of the Rodney Hides, the Gerry Brownlees and the Hone Harawiras as they might be evident in the Hastings, the Buckinghams and the Clarences alive in Richard’s time.

One last reflection: in Shakespeare’s text Richard is killed by Richmond with a single blow of his sword. There is a one-on-one, man-on-man dignity in that single beheading blow and a chance for us to reflect on all those who Richard has dispatched to the block to experience a similar fate. Bludgeoning a man to death with the fists, no matter how well staged and acted this is, does not leave the same impression and I for one did not see Richmond rise from that brutality and see a man who might be the hope for a better future. Maybe that is the message we are supposed to receive, who knows? You might – and you’ll be able to make up your own mind by going to see this excellent piece of work as it plays for a goodly season. 

Post Script: we took our eight year old son to the show as we usually do. With the minimal amount of priming as to story and characters his enjoyment and concentration was complete. He loved it and understood it thoroughly if his questions afterwards were anything to go by. I asked if he had any advice to potential theatre-goers and his response was that you should wear appropriate clothing. He, for the record, wore a fur fabric, full body leopard suit complete with hood, ears and tail … 
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