Richard III

Richard III: In Manderin

Ah, live theatre.

Apparently, the National Theatre of China sent their beautiful, ornate costumes in a box... that failed to make it to the Globe on time.  The Artistic Director of the Globe came out to apologize to the audience, and commend those folks at the Globe who managed to costume an entire play in less than 24 hours.  And I think they did a fairly fine job of it.  The costumes were mostly black, but certainly reflected the Chinese nature of the show.

I may be having a memory blank... but I don't think there are three witches in Richard III.  Somehow,  Macbeth's prophesying witches migrated to this other tragedy, again warning the main character of the fates.  Also, the National Theatre's Richard was not deformed in any way.  I'm curious if they removed the lines referring to his deformity intentionally and whether it carries different connotations in Chinese culture.  There was a fantastic moment where I thought they might have the witches deform his body, right after he killed the Princes in the Tower, but after they left, he resumed his healthy state.  I may need to steal this for my own production... the one I have, one day...

The movement was stylized in certain scenes, in the manner of Chinese opera.  It was especially evident in the movement of the mourning Lady Anne.  Her dead husband's body was not present in the scene, and I wished they had added it.  However, Margaret was as strong as ever, and her curses carried more power, as she resembled the witches in both movement and voice.

The murderers were a comic treat.  Carefully choreographed martial arts combined with ridiculous failure made them seem completely ineffectual.  Also, I missed the differentiation where in Shakespeare's R3, one murderer loses heart and tries to save Clarence, but too late.  These two were so bad at killing Clarence it made the scene funny... until the very end.

The audience, once again, loved this play.  They ate it up, and the applause at the end lasted as long as that for Twelfth Night.  I'm glad I got to see this play, even sans the right costume.  One of my favorite parts was the use of the sound system, and the deep gong when the new king was crowned, which resulted in Henry's crowning to have the same ominous air as the crowning of Richard's... promising more bloodshed to come.