Richard III raises the bar of excellence
When I saw Ron Jenkins’ production of Romeo & Juliet last fall, I was convinced The Shakespeare Company with its producing partner Hit & Myth had set an almost impossible standard to top.
Then came Craig Hall’s production of Macbeth in the spring that exceeded even that touchstone, so I figured The Shakespeare Company and Hit & Myth had definitely given us their all. Not so by a long shot. Ron Jenkins’ version of Shakespeare’s Richard III, playing in the Vertigo Studio Theatre until Oct. 8, is a truly masterful achievement that raises the bar of excellence once again.
The buzz at intermission opening night was that it rivals, if not exceeds, the very best of Broadway, London and our own Stratford, and that was from Calgary theatregoers who frequent these bastions of world class theatre.
I know I’m going to sound like a broken record when I say it is such a dazzling accomplishment, I can’t see how we could ever expect anything better from The Shakespeare Company and Hit & Myth, which continues to raise the benchmark for theatre, period.
Richard III is considered one of Shakespeare’s history plays, but the way Jenkins approaches this carefully edited version, it now more closely resembles the great tragedies.
The scheming, bloodthirsty, power hungry Richard holding court at Vertigo Studio stage is like Macbeth’s brother in blood and Haysam Kadri makes him the most dangerous weasel imaginable.
In his opening speech, Richard gleefully tells us how much he hates his brothers Edward (Jason Schneider) who is the current king, and Clarence (Elinor Holt) the next in line for the throne and how he plans to get rid of both of them.
Then he turns his evil sights and wicked tongue on Lady Anne (Amy Burks), whose husband he has just murdered.
He actually woos her at the funeral and watching Burks descend into vulnerability and defeat is devastating.
Richard’s ally in evil is the treacherously ambitious Buckingham (Kevin Corey) until Richard asks him to have two young princes murdered and then Corey’s whole body is wracked with fear and regret.
Natasha Girgis is a wonderfully creepy Queen Margaret, a selfproclaimed soothsayer.
In Girgis’s hands, Margaret is more ominous than those three witches in Macbeth combined.
Jenkins is a daring genius when it comes to switching gender roles as he does once again by having Brianna Johnston play Richard’s thug Catesby.
It’s such an uninhibited performance that it adds a whole new level of seductive evil on both Catesby and Richard’s behalf.
Jenkins has orchestrated a finely tuned ensemble company that’s made all the more impressive by Kadri’s virtuoso performance.
Think of the delight Anthony Hopkins’ Hannibal Lecter took in tormenting his victims, his doctors and the FBI and now multiply that tenfold and you’ll have an inkling of how Kardri manipulates and seduces the audience as well and as thoroughly as those poor wretches who cross Richard’s path.
Kadri’s Richard knows how to play up his deformity when it suits him, but to show how agile the man really is despite his crooked frame.
I think it’s time we fitted Kadri with one of those ankle bracelets so he can’t leave the city because to lose an actor, director and administrator of such brilliance would be criminal.
The stunning visual highlights in Jenkins’ Richard III are too many to list, but Richard’s dream sequence on the battlefield immediately comes to mind.