THEATER

Richard III: Two Views

Directed by Tina Packer

At the Loeb Mainstage

Through May 8

PRO

By Christopher R. Blazejewski

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CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Richard III is a big production. There is very little that is simple, subtle or conventional about director Tina Packer's interpretations and logistical choices. But Packer does not allow the production's grandiose ambition to get out of hand. Rather, the performance comes together as an innovative, entertaining, colorful, emotional and eclectic menagerie of talented actors, an ingenious set, well-chosen musical accompaniment and even some battlefield choreography. Although the performance is rather long--running just shy of four hours--and the plot is often complicated and confusing for those not intimately familiar with the play's history, Richard III rarely looses its intensity, appeal and ambition.

Packer divides the character of the evil, hunchbacked Richard into separate roles played by three different actors (Paul Monteleoni '01, Marisa Echeverria '00 and Henry Clarke) in a skillful but rather conspicuous, representation of the central villain as a piecewise amalgamation of three distinct personalities. Although one should be suspicious of any theatrical performance that is compelled to provide a verbose description and justification of the director's interpretation in the program, Packer relies more on the performance than the program to present her concept of the three Richards convincingly.

The play begins powerfully, as the first Richard (Monteleoni) crouches in an eerie green light in the center of the stage and delivers the difficult "I shall prove myself a villain" soliloquy with a brilliant sense of introverted evil. The first Richard, the so-called Master of Ceremonies, hobbles around the stage in a whirlwind of action, murdering his way to the English throne. Monteleoni's performance is particularly pointed during Richard's outrageous, paradoxical, yet effective, seduction of Lady Anne (Amy Piper '99), who plays her role with convincing passion, reacting to the death of her husband at the hands of Richard.

There is a wonderful scene in the early stages of Richard III when two murderers (Clarke and Thandi Parris '02) creep into the bedchamber of the Duke of Clarence (Jeremy Bronson '02). The theatrical chemistry between Clarke and Parris first evidenced is later fully realized in their final confrontation as Richard and Richmond.

There is a momentary slump in the action during the performance of the second Richard, although this is not entirely the fault of Echeverria. Although she lacks the pervasive intensity of Monteleoni, she is perhaps the most fundamentally sound and cautiously precise Richard. The conflict between Richard and Margaret (Nora Zimmett) is nicely enacted, as Echeverria's chilling calmness in the face of Zimmett's unrestrained horror, fear and hatred subtly foreshadows Richard's eventual insanity.