Spiritual setting proves eerily perfect
Richard III Leicester Cathedral
Iwas half-expecting to have to don a suit of armour to get inside Leicester Cathedral to see Richard III.
A right royal rumpus erupted in May at news that touring company Antic Disposition was staging a theatrical coup – presenting the play within spitting distance of the notorious, nay vilified Plantagenet’s tomb (a tourist shrine since the 2015 interment). There have been Hamlets at Elsinore, even a Richard III at the Tower of London but never, surely, such proximity between Shakespearean fiction and skeletal fact. A case of too close to the bone?
Leading the outcry was Philippa Langley, the dauntless screenwriter behind the all-important Looking for Richard Project (instrumental in fostering the archaeological digs that resulted in the corpse, identified through DNA testing, being unearthed in a car park in 2012).
She condemned the cathedral for this “unprincipled commercial and promotional venture”. The Richard III Society weighed in too, complaining that it was “both insensitive and disrespectful to stage a play that denigrates Richard III, an anointed king of England, in the very place where he was reburied with ‘dignity and honour’ only two years ago”.
Protective emotions are running high. Yet in the event, those lucky enough to get into the first of two dates were confronted not by a mob of Ricardians but by a humble leaflet of discontent, asking them to look beyond the “evil caricature”. And Antic Disposition has proved as good as its words of reassurance. Whether or not you believe Richard’s “spirit” might be perturbed by thespian misrepresentation, or the sanctity of his resting place violated, the last thing needed was the insult of mediocrity being added to long-standing reputational injury.
Yet the evening, with the action hurtling up and down the nave, grips from start to finish; intelligent, wellacted, sensitive. While there’s a frisson to applauding the actors and then going off to contemplate the “villain” of the piece – lying in dedicated seclusion – I suspect the production would cast a similar spell in any of the cathedral venues it is visiting (next stops Gloucester, Bristol, Salisbury). Bell chimes coincide, as if by divine ordaining, with passing references to the time and the last words, here acquiring the quality of a benediction, are “God say Amen”.
The hallmark of co-directors Ben Horslen and John Risebero’s moderndress approach is an eerie confluence between the world of the living and the dead. Louise Templeton’s widowed Queen Margaret stalks the action in a bloodied funeral pall, as though an apparition from the underworld. Toby Manley’s Richard – initially heartily innocuous in black-tie rig-out, later a blazing-eyed blackshirt, dragging his limp, twisted foot over the flagstones, his outbursts echoing on high – is calmly observed by a growing army of victims, the strain showing in haunted looks as he finally ascends to the throne.
He reclines on the eve of Bosworth on what will become his coffin and in battle is assailed less by Alex Hooper’s rugged Richmond than by this wrathful contingent, pawing him to the ground. It’s splendid stuff: something to shout about, not at.