Let’s just say this time it served me well. The photos didn’t really do the costumes justice – the style was simple and classical and I liked the use of blacks, greys and blues to create a very simple palette – particularly the choice to have the royals in creams which instantly shone out in the dark surroundings of the auditorium. Plus the embroidery on Richard’s outfit was stunning. The staging itself was in the round and by necessity relatively simple, though I liked both the use of the stands (with Richard sitting amongst the audience and the audience themselves becoming Lords and onlookers) and the motif of a stained window at one end of the room, framing the initially positioned throne and later doubling as an arched doorway. All of these things worked simply and effectively to evoke the time period.
And truthfully the production simply didn’t need any modernisation or whistles and bells as the strength of it was in the performances. The entire ensemble was impressively strong. I particularly enjoyed Matthew Thomas controlled frustration as Bullingbrooke (even though I kept getting confused as he reminded me of Sam Cox, who I’d recently seen as Harry Percy in Henry IV – confusing dynasties ahoy) and Oliver Millingham as Aumerle, who had a wonderful moment following Richard’s arrest where his emotions were beautifully transparent and then hidden. I also thought that Julia Hills was a bit of a show stealer as the Duchess of York, with an impressively funny begging scene.
Really though this production was completely about John Heffernan – unsurprisingly my theatre going friends were entirely right and this is actor well worth raving about. He was a compelling presence every second he was on the stage with a truly tremendous journey throughout – impetuous, instinctive, filled with childish petulance and leaping glee, confusion, burgeoning into despair, mania and understanding – each emotion was as extreme and complete as the next. It reminded me of the string of beads theory of Shakespeare – where if you play each scene true to itself you end up with such a variety of colours that the character is revealed gloriously like a necklace, whereas if you worry about making the character consistent throughout the colours end up muddied – I’ve never seen a performance that captured that idea so well for me before. I particularly found both the scene where he relinquishes the crown and the scene in the prison incredible to watch. And in moments where he was whispering or utterly silent for long stretches of time you could have heard a pin drop the audience was so rapt. And despite severely over-running (it was well over three and a half hours when I saw it), the production didn’t feel for a second like it was dragging and in fact it was a shock to discover it was suddenly over (though this is a genuine feel from the Histories where nothing is ever completely sewn up.
If I did have any doubts about the performance it was solely in wondering whether you were supposed to find Richard so utterly likable, even in the moments where he is being awful. My mother certainly came away as a complete Heffernan fan girl (best mother’s day present ever) and I he is skyrocketed up my list of actors I will do my utmost to see. This feeling may also have been coloured by having so recently seen a similarly sympathetic Edward II and now I have an odd desire to see the two plays in rep.
All in all a thoroughly stunning production, showing that the best of regional theatre can more than stand up against its London counterparts and I’d be genuinely ecstatic to hear that this production had got a West End transfer. Fingers crossed.
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