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The Review - THEATRE by TOM FOOT
Published: 17 April 2008

Sad stories of the death of kings

RICHARD II
Roundhouse

A STROPPY clown-like King Richard dominated The Roundhouse stage on Tuesday night as the Royal Shakespeare Company announced the arrival of eight plays spanning a century of blood-splattered history.
Jonathan Slinger puts in a powerful performance in the title role that lays solid foundations for the spring season at the Chalk Farm playhouse.
Inch-deep in make up, he enters to the flattering reception of his court. Stooping and beckoning they surround him, keeping time to the music, suggesting something staged about their relationship.
Indolent Richard has no real friends; just sycophants, sex-slaves and free-loaders.
The story of a wastrel King, wronged by out-of-favour patriots and including a controversial deposition scene, fuelled a real life rebellion to overthrow the floundering Queen Elizabeth.
It is regarded as Shakespeare’s most radical text after great swathes of the 1595 quarto were excised by the censors of the day. It remains relevant to a contemporary audience: the sell-off of public land and the fighting of costly wars abroad – here against the “rug-headed kerns” in Ireland – smacked of a more recent administration.
But Richard II is essentially a history play locked in its day and a precursor to two tetralogies, the Henry’s and Richard III, to come. From the outset the audience is bombarded with names of dukes and lords and family rifts. This is Shakespeare as the you might imagine it: trumpets tooting, men prancing in tights and ranting in rhyme.
The text, written in rhyming couplets, is laden with natural metaphors; the young Shakespeare drawing on his country-boy roots, repeatedly punctuating the plot with analogies between the rotting state and an over-weeded garden.
Richard’s parasitical train – Bushy, Bagot and Green – are described as the “caterpillars of the commonwealth” to good effect.
John of Gaunt’s famous “sceptred isle” speech, which is often interpreted with heavy irony, was delivered with rousing gusto by the outstanding Roger Watkins.
And the Lear-like dawning upon Richard in his redemptive “sad stories of the death of kings” speech had the audience gripped.
Stripped of his title, Richard is covered by a waterfall of sand poured from high above the rig.
The image of the buried ruler reminded me of the final lines of Shelley’s poem Ozymandias about another monarch reduced to ruins in the desert: “Nothing beside remains around that colossal wreck. Boundless and bare, the lone and level sands stretch far away.”

Until May 22
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