Religion, Tragedy, and the Child: David Tennant as Shakespeare's Richard II

5/5

David Tennant embodies the title role of Shakespeare’s Richard II, live in Stratford and broadcast worldwide by the Royal Shakespeare Company for the first time. The production’s atmosphere is reverent and gripping.

Design and lighting, by Stephen Brimson Lewis and Tim Mitchell respectively, feels period-appropriate but freshly modern. The thrust stage offers director Gregory Doran great variety for staging while a bridge and shimmering curtains of beads infuse a sense of mystery.

Doran uses space shrewdly in executing the production’s allegorical concept. Parallels between Richard and Jesus Christ were notable but not heavy handed, keeping the focus on the characters. Still, chant-like music, composed by Paul Englishby and performed live, combined with the cathedral-like design contribute to the sense of holiness, aptly touching on the play’s central issue of the divine right of kings.

Rather than resting within this allegorical context, David Tennant plays an insightfully original Richard II. At first his playful yet petulant childishness seems almost irritatingly misplaced. This portrayal, however, dramatizes Richard’s downfall, casting him as a sympathetic character by drawing heavily on the historical Richard’s young reign from the age of ten. The tragedy of Tennant’s Richard is childish expectation of absolute power that belies development too arrested either for effective rule or to cope with the adversity of Henry Bolingbroke’s betrayal.

Nigel Lindsay’s gruff, almost stiff Henry Bolingbroke serves as an insightful foil for Tennant’s Richard. Seemingly flat at the outset, Lindsay subtly navigates the changes from rough, wronged youth to easy, triumphant victor to remorseful, uncertain tyrant.

Emma Hamilton as the Queen and Jane Lapotaire as the Duchess of Gloucester both feel overacted, if in opposite ways. Hamilton seems blithely naïve, lacking chemistry with Tennant, while Cruickshank’s histrionics seem too overblow even in her dramatic role.

The rest of the ensemble, though, is effective. Michael Pennington plays a heartbreakingly reflective John of Gaunt while Oliver Ford Davies and Marty Cruickshank are comically warm as the Duke and Duchess of York. The Duke of Aumerle, played by Oliver Rix, adds to this comedy while also exhibiting striking seriousness in relation to Richard’s journey to the grave.

Vision, design, and stellar acting combine in a refreshing, discerning production of Shakespeare’s Richard II by the Royal Shakespeare Company. Nevertheless, David Tennant in the title role is clearly the highlight of the show, precisely because his stardom is hidden behind his masterfully original King Richard II.