"Richard III" is the third collaboration between actor Michael Cumpsty and director Brian Kulick at Classic Stage Company. Kulick also happens to be artistic director of CSC, and apparently he has a great fondness for Cumpty's Shakespeare performanes (even so much as to let him be co-director on this one), so I don't think it really matters whether the productions are any good, because until Kulick is booted from his post, I think we can safely assume we'll get a new CumptyKulick play each season. The first production they did, "Hamlet," was probably the most interesting. Not that it was necessarily great, but it had enough wacky interesting quirks (like starting the play with the audience standing on the stage) to get noticed. Cumpsty, was a bit too old for the title role, but he wasn't terrible. The productions, both in terms of creativity and in terms of Cumpsty's performances seem to be going steadily downhill. For "Richard III," the major set pieces were a mirrored wall, and eight chandeliers, each which would move up or down depending on the scene. This seemed to be an utter waste of effort, considering I don't think anyone would know where a scene took place if the upstage far-right chandelier was down halfway or the downstage middle-left one was touching the floor. They were very nice chandeliers, mind you, but seemed really kind of confusing and pointless. In what I suppose an effort to engage a rather bored audience near the end of the first act, one of the performers was apparently directed to run up the aisles and shake the hands of audience members. Many audience members were also given flags, and were encouraged to wave them in support of Richard. I found that rather schticky, though playing with the flag at least gave me something to do.
Cumpsty's Richard III was very very very unlikeable. Which I guess is supposed to be the point, but I just wanted to run up onstage myself to get over with the killing of him so I could go home. In, what I supposed was an effort to keep the length of the play down (it runs 2 hours, 40 minutes) without cutting too much, many of the actors would just race through their lines. Cumpsty especially seemed to like to blurt out his lines as quickly as possible... unless they were very important, in which case he took more care in reciting them. That's an interesting take on editing a play - leave all the lines in, but the ones that you would normally have cut, or that are technically necessary but don't have much impact on the plot, just race through.
The rest of the cast was fine, with Judith Roberts (Duchess of York) and Maria Tucci (Queen Elizabeth) being particularly good.
And then there was hurricane Robert Maxwell, whose Queen Margaret is absolutely spectacular. She only gets basically two scenes - one in the first act where she curses Richard, and one in the second where she chats with the other mourning mothers - but she creates so much electricity that it's a wonder the theatre didn't burn down. I almost wished she could have grabbed the executioners axe in her first scene, chopped off Richard's head, and done the rest of the play by herself. She was, in fact, the only performer to get exit applause after her scenes. I was almost going to leave at intermission because I thought her character had been killed (it had at least been mentioned), but I'm glad I stayed because she had another brilliant scene in act two. The production is almost worth seeing just for her performance.
I will say that while I was miserably bored by the first act, overall I did enjoy the second - probably mostly because all three of the mothers had big scenes that were able to divert my attention from the irritating title character. And, of course because (*spoiler*) whiney Richard's life is finally taken away.
I should point out that Cumpsty could improve since this production only began performances two days ago, but I have to say I am rather skeptical. Then again, this is probably worth seeing just to be electrified by Roberta Maxwell. I can't help but wonder though, how much better the production could have been without Cumpsty and Kulick's misguiding hands.
