April 24, 2007
"Magnetic, repulsive, attractive, intriguing, vicious," the programme calls Richard III, the subject of the current OFS show. It's a tall order, but Brian McMahon's Richard manages to be all those things. A duke with his eye on the throne, he is a consummate manipulator, smirking with glee as he pits the characters against each other and picks scabs off old wounds from the Wars of the Roses. He seems cool and calculating even in his moments of greatest outward emotion. This makes his later descent into frothing madness and painful vulnerability all the more shocking.
He has an excellent cast backing him up. Some productions of Shakespeare histories come across as a main character and a jumble of undifferentiated lords, but colourful characters fairly leap out at you here. There's David Cochrane's charismatic spin doctor Buckingham; Madeleine Forey's fragile yet steely Margaret, one of the first to see through Richard's machinations; and Katie Edgerton, playing Elizabeth, who stands up to him in a magnificent rapid-fire tennis match of an argument in the fourth act. In fact, there is hardly a dull character in the whole large bunch and even the bit parts are entertaining, notably the hilarious toadying mayor and the strawberry-loving bishop.
The dialogue is spoken at a breathless pace, but after all there's a lot of play to get through, a feast of intrigue, backbiting and murder, full of psychological drama and great lines you didn't realise you knew. At times, as when Richard destroys the jovial, honest Hastings (played with gusto by Matt Lacey), taking it more slowly would have lent events more weight and shock value, but mostly the fast pace works: the play thunders forward with a sense of ever-building doom. When the payoff comes it is as devastating and satisfying as one could wish.
Triptych Theatre have created a hugely enjoyable production of a play which still has a great deal to say about politics and doesn't get the attention it deserves. Catch it if you can.
He has an excellent cast backing him up. Some productions of Shakespeare histories come across as a main character and a jumble of undifferentiated lords, but colourful characters fairly leap out at you here. There's David Cochrane's charismatic spin doctor Buckingham; Madeleine Forey's fragile yet steely Margaret, one of the first to see through Richard's machinations; and Katie Edgerton, playing Elizabeth, who stands up to him in a magnificent rapid-fire tennis match of an argument in the fourth act. In fact, there is hardly a dull character in the whole large bunch and even the bit parts are entertaining, notably the hilarious toadying mayor and the strawberry-loving bishop.
The dialogue is spoken at a breathless pace, but after all there's a lot of play to get through, a feast of intrigue, backbiting and murder, full of psychological drama and great lines you didn't realise you knew. At times, as when Richard destroys the jovial, honest Hastings (played with gusto by Matt Lacey), taking it more slowly would have lent events more weight and shock value, but mostly the fast pace works: the play thunders forward with a sense of ever-building doom. When the payoff comes it is as devastating and satisfying as one could wish.
Triptych Theatre have created a hugely enjoyable production of a play which still has a great deal to say about politics and doesn't get the attention it deserves. Catch it if you can.