The dream of the 1390's is alive in Portland, and Act Three of Richard the Second (the Second) will be posted below as soon as it's uploaded. I don't think I'd be giving this run nearly as much old-school, Look-At-Me welly if I hadn't tried the first run without, so I'm glad I did both, but I'm definitely prefering this one. This play makes so much more sense to me as a musical. Let a set piece be a set piece. If Richard is actually messianic his surrender makes perfect sense: Flint Castle is his Gethsemane, and who doesn't want to play that? A world's emerging, a blazingly strange Golden-Age-of-Hollywood/Military-Dictatorship hybrid that for all I know is exactly what Elizabethan England was actually like. It would be good if I had longer fingers.
I watched The Hollow Crown adaptation of Richard II the other day, and while the Richard-as-a-martyr/the-Messiah imagery was a little too on the nose for my taste, I think overall that was precisely what made it work. (Except it probably made the viewer side, or at least sympathise, with Richard - which isn't the point of the play at all, I shouldn't think?) It also made me fully realise how much of a feat it is for an actor to single-handedly perform a play in front of a camera, without any fellow actors to play off, or even props/costumes/a stage to move about. Your formal Run Richard makes perfect sense to me now, firm in his belief that angels will come to his aid and strike down his enemies - until they don't. (I'm still trying to figure out how much truth there is to Bolingbroke's statement that all he ever wanted was to get back what was his by right, and not Richard's crown. I'm taking his show of humility in front of King Richard is more for the benefit of the crowds than anything else?)
Crazily, The Hollow Crown was the first time I realised we're actually meant to expect the joust to *happen*. It built that up very well. After that though I kept thinking of Michael Jackson. I suspect our sympathies are meant to drift to wards Richard, though not start out there. And Bolingbroke hasn't really had to decide what he wants yet. Bt the new Act Four might be the turning point.
I watched The Hollow Crown adaptation of Richard II the other day, and while the Richard-as-a-martyr/the-Messiah imagery was a little too on the nose for my taste, I think overall that was precisely what made it work. (Except it probably made the viewer side, or at least sympathise, with Richard - which isn't the point of the play at all, I shouldn't think?) It also made me fully realise how much of a feat it is for an actor to single-handedly perform a play in front of a camera, without any fellow actors to play off, or even props/costumes/a stage to move about. Your formal Run Richard makes perfect sense to me now, firm in his belief that angels will come to his aid and strike down his enemies - until they don't. (I'm still trying to figure out how much truth there is to Bolingbroke's statement that all he ever wanted was to get back what was his by right, and not Richard's crown. I'm taking his show of humility in front of King Richard is more for the benefit of the crowds than anything else?)
ReplyDeleteCrazily, The Hollow Crown was the first time I realised we're actually meant to expect the joust to *happen*. It built that up very well. After that though I kept thinking of Michael Jackson. I suspect our sympathies are meant to drift to wards Richard, though not start out there. And Bolingbroke hasn't really had to decide what he wants yet. Bt the new Act Four might be the turning point.
ReplyDelete