Read Online Richard III by William Shakespeare - Free Book Online

with exquisite idleness. To do this successfully he needs other people on the stage with him: to be ignored, stared past, or pushed aside during the lower reaches, and gripped and buttonholed when the wave rises to its crested climax. For this reason Olivier tends to fail in soliloquy—except when, as in the opening speech of Richard, it is directed straight at the audience, who then become his temporary foils … Olivier the actor needs reactors: just as electricity,
in vacuo
, is unseen, unfelt, and powerless. 13
    Actors since the 1950s have inevitably felt the burden of Olivier’s performance as they have sought to offer their own representations of the role. Despite this a number of actors have succeeded in thoughtful, original, and exciting productions of the play; for example, Antony Sher in Bill Alexander’s 1984 production, Simon Russell Beale in that of Sam Mendes, and Ian McKellen for Richard Eyre at the National Theatre in London in 1992.
    The play was edited to form part of Peter Hall and John Barton’s radical analysis of power politics,
The Wars of the Roses
, for the RSC in 1963, a production that received great acclaim and that was shown (in much abridged form) on television.
    David Wheeler’s production at the Cort Theater, New York, starring Al Pacino in 1979, received mixed reviews; Pacino’s quest for the essence of the character was further developed in his idiosyncratic film
Looking for Richard
(1996), in which he explores the text and the rehearsal process in a series of workshops while attempting to relate the plot to the world around him. The Rustaveli Company of Soviet Georgia created a highly politicized production in 1979–80.Directed by Robert Sturua, it received rave reviews, especially for physical inventiveness of a kind that also characterized a production by the Odeon Theatre of Bucharest that toured internationally in 1994, making particularly strong use of masks suggestive of Richard’s animal crest, the boar. In 2003 Barry Kyle directed the play at the Globe Theatre with an all-female cast. Kathyrn Hunter’s engagingly “ironic and humorously amoral Richard” 14 was generally admired, as was Linda Bassett’s powerful Queen Margaret.
    The most notable films have been Laurence Olivier’s (1955) and Ian McKellen’s (1995). Olivier’s was set in the Middle Ages and is theatrical in its use of long shots, which give it a static feel. The diction, especially Olivier’s famously clipped tones, now seems dated. For the McKellen film, which was developed out of Richard Eyre’s stage production for the National Theatre in London, director Richard Loncraine updated the period and set, relating the play to the 1936 British abdication crisis and the rise of Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists. Both movies open spectacularly and employ what film critics call the “forbidden look”: in soliloquy, Olivier and McKellen stare straight into the camera, engaging the audience in a similar manner to the stage actor speaking directly into the auditorium.
AT THE RSC
Richard: A Discovery of Evil
    In the last fifty years
Richard III
in performance has come to symbolize evils particularly relevant to our times. When performed as part of a history play cycle involving the three parts of
Henry VI
, the play and the character’s significance become part of a wider examination of sociopolitical concerns. When performed in isolation, the character of Richard becomes dominant, and the play usually delves into psychological territory encompassing modern beliefs on the nature of evil in man. In creating the early RSC landmark production
The Wars of the Roses
in 1963, directors Peter Hall and John Barton edited and rewrote the three parts of
Henry VI
so they could be played in conjunction with
Richard III
as a trilogy.
Richard III
was subsequently performed as part of a sequence involving the
Henry VI
plays in 1988, 2001, and 2006–08.
    The Wars of the Roses
, strongly influenced by the