RichardIII isdevilishly goodfun
Joseph Arkley, the actor playing the devil’s apprentice, Richard III, took to social media to tweet: “We have unleashed this beast at the newly opened @HorsecrossPerth. People of Scotland. Come and see us. Watch me smile and murder while I smile. I’ve never had so much fun on a stage.”
It’s a fitting message of glee from the man playing Shakespeare’s best baddie, and considering director Lu Kemp has styled her cast in up-to-the-minute garb, it’s just the way this Richard III would communicate.
The current production by Perth Theatre has the Royal Protector replaying the repulsive gurgles of the strangled princes he’s had assassinated over and over again through his MP3 player earphones. Seated idly, he uses the technology to supply his blood lust. It’s the perfect accessory for a psychopath. Cunning Richard has been cast not as a physical monstrosity, just an epic moral fail.
The shocker is what an enjoyable horror story this is. Something about how Richard shares everything with the audience involves us, even when everything he thinks and says is reprehensible. Remind you of anyone currently very fond of late-night tweets? Make England Great Again.
Lu Kemp promised that she was teaching her young cast members ‘one hundred different ways to kill someone’ and the cold silence of two young henchmen in hoodies and bright trainers was awesome in its threatening malevolence. Richard’s older brother Clarence didn’t stand a chance when the youths entered the Tower. He hardly begged for his life, so certain was their acting.
There were some soaringly evocative performances from Mercy Ojelade, who as the recently widowed Lady Anne cries out her grief for her husband and hatred of Richard, his killer. So fierce is her rejection of him, she forcefully globs him in the eyes with spit. But so wickedly good at playing the agonised suitor is Richard, that he’s hardly wiped his face before he’s secured her betrothal. And she metaphorically dies the moment she accepts.
Ojelade comes back as a nasty assassin, Tyrrel who’s peevishly delighted to strangle for gold.
As promised, Michael Moreland as Buckingham has the energetic efficiency of a chief whip, keen and quick-thinking, he is the master puppeteer propelling Richard’s passage to power. But he’s bitten by the snake he helped create and just when he’s ready to claim his share, he’s mown down by a change of direction by the master he so loyally served.
A bright, stark vision of Shakespeare’s topical House of Cards drama, this plastic seat modernist Richard III would not please the old guard who might desire more velvet and trumpets, but it was fascinatingly edgy, high on acting and exposing human defects and devilishly good for any first-timer coming at this tale.
•Richard III runs at Perth Theatre until Saturday.