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Friday, March 29, 2024
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FALL OF A KING — Despite a strong performance by the supporting cast of Shakespeare’s “Richard II,” lead actor Michael Hayden brought down the play with over-acting and a lack of substance. Hayden is also simultaneously starring in the Shakespeare Theater Company’s production of “Henry V.”

D.C.'s Shakespeare Theatre Co. poorly casts ‘Richard II’

Supporting cast fight to save play

In terms of both plot and performance, it’s the titular character (played by Michael Hayden) who causes all the problems in the Shakespeare Theater Company’s production of Shakespeare’s “Richard II.” To borrow a line from another of Shakespeare’s plays, Hayden is “all sound and fury, signifying nothing.” It is a credit to the other actors that they manage to salvage at least a little bit of the production. When Hayden was offstage or minimized, the play was watchable — otherwise, good luck.

Interestingly, Hayden is currently cast as the lead in another Shakespearean history being performed at the same theater at the same time, “Henry V.” It leads one to wonder how much of his shivering, broken delivery was due to a choice (albeit a bad one) about how to play the character, and how much was due to the mental and physical exertion of foolishly agreeing to take on two gigantic parts at once. Hayden should have chosen one, and done it well.

But not everything about Hayden’s performance was bad. He successfully portrayed the king’s petulance and childish greed, especially when confronting his uncles in the first scene. Physically, he remained engrossing throughout the entire play. He wailed, he thrashed, he emoted from every pore on his body. But because of his incompetence with the words, all of this weeping and gnashing of teeth became an incomprehensible spectacle. Though his vocal variety was excellent, he may as well have been intoning a single vowel for all the meaning he was able to convey. He ruined some of Shakespeare’s most devastating lines, especially after intermission when Richard is usurped by his cousin Bolingbroke (who becomes Henry IV after his coronation). The great monologues that Richard delivers in Act IV, scene I and Act V, scene V were rendered to tattered pieces as Hayden stops and starts throughout them. “Richard II” is written almost entirely in verse, a fact that the rest of the actors in the production recognized. But Hayden worked against this, hemming and hawing, spitting out the poetry in four- or five-word chunks. It was like watching Shatner do Shakespeare without the fun of the accompanying irony.

There is a certain point where an actor’s choices in portraying a character need to be accommodated to the audience’s needs. Hayden strung his words together and spaced them apart at intervals that have no relevance to their meaning.

The plot of “Richard II” is far too intricate and rambling to encapsulate. However, there are a few important points: there is a king who’s pretty lousy at being king; he kills an uncle and banishes a cousin; the cousin comes back and takes over. And it’s Shakespeare, so of course the title character dies in the end. That’s about all you need to know; the rest will explain itself as the show goes on.

It’s the uncles — John of Gaunt (Duke of Lancaster), the Duke of York (Ted van Griethuysen) and the Duke of Gloucester (Floyd King) — who stood out in this production. King, whose character was offed pretty quickly by his venomous nephew, comes back in the second act as the Bishop of Carlisle. (Don’t worry, though — this double duty actually worked.) King is a Shakespeare regular who, a couple months ago, took the role of Touchstone in “As You Like It.” While he was banal as the comedic jester, King was compelling as both of these sober whitebeards.

The Duke of York thankfully stuck around for most of the show. Surrounded by the turmoil of usurpation, York is loyal to no individual but rather to the crown. He is even willing (thrilled!) to give up his own son in the name of the throne, no matter who sits on it. York, along with the usurping king Henry IV (played admirably by Charles Borland), become the moral center of the play because of Hayden’s de facto abdication of Richard’s position of centrality.

Ultimately, however, despite serviceable performances by the vast majority of the cast and a very clever set design, the play falls flat on its face. This snail of a show clocks in at three-plus hours, but feels like five. And, like everything within the play, it’s Richard’s fault.

You can reach this writer at thescene@theeagleonline.com.


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