Fiennes Touch For The Bard




By Donald Lyons
New York Post
September 10, 2000



RALPH Fiennes as a medieval king, Richard II, is exercising power in a strange way. He, and he alone, is dressed in white; he is sitting on a high chair; he is judging a bitter quarrel among his relatives and nobles. He laughs inappropriately; he is sneering and sibilant; eventually, he decides on two sentences of exile. He sneers at the populism of his cousin, Henry, and he mocks the eloquent dying of his uncle, Gaunt (a fine David Burke, who recasts his patriotic speech from boast to anguish).


This Richard is a man ill at home with the necessary realities of power; he loves the regal signs of his office but not the social interaction which makes power tolerable. He is a philosopher of power but a fool about human beings. Fiennes, playing a king who assumed the throne at 10, invents a perfect tone, haughty and remote, for a man who thinks image is all.


It's the superb import of "Richard II" - and "Coriolanus," too - from the new Almeida space at the old power station and early film studio in Shoreditch, in the north of London, and represents the most exciting, vivid study of power and personality in
years.


The director of both plays is Jonathan Kent, who guided
Fiennes through "Hamlet" some six years ago; Kent and
designer Paul Brown see the play as a pretty bare affair of grass floor, single tree (very Beckett, this) and landscape cleared for the clash of personality.


How fluid, how fast-moving this look at the dynamics of
politics! When Richard seizes his land, Henry dashes home from exile. This leads inevitably to a confrontation where, with much bitterness and sarcasm, Richard surrenders his crown to a reluctant but greedy Henry, done with beautifully judged poise by Linus Roache.


King Henry is drawn sorrowfully to order the killing of an imprisoned Richard, who postures and meditates in jail, much as he had done on the throne.


This "Richard" becomes a study in the incompleteness of
power - from the hands of an eloquent malcontent with legitimacy on his side to the hands of a competent populist who lacks legitimacy.


Also telling are Oliver Ford Davies and Barbara Jefford as the Duke and Duchess of York, and Oliver Ryan as their rebellious son whom the father wants to denounce and the mother to save.


The other play, "Coriolanus," is from 1607, 12 years later than "Richard II" and similarly treats someone to whom the exercise of political power is temperamentally alien.


"Coriolanus," deftly staged by Kent and Brown in a bleak
wasteland, concerns early Roman politics. Coriolanus, brilliantly incarnated by Fiennes, is no Richard; he is a successful warrior to whom the compromises of politics - a forced groveling to the populace - is repellent. His attitude to the people is "Hang 'em."


We see him in action at the battle of the Volscian town of Corioli (whence he derives his title); he is fearless, going alone into a blinding light offstage and returning to drag the Roman army with him. Two Romans are ecstatic with glee at his victory: Senator Menenius (Oliver Ford Davies, playing stupidity superbly) and Coriolanus' mother, Volumnia.


Volumnia is portrayed by Barbara Jefford in a performance that subtly, terribly - but never rhetorically - shows us how total is her control of her son. She is the Roman mother.


Coriolanus is now the obvious choice for consul, but to win the office he must appear in humble clothes (a very funny scene) before the people. After this performance, he is accused by the tribunes (popular demagogues) of contempt; he is exiled. He goes to join Rome's enemy, Aufidius (Linus Roache, in a masterful performance of ambivalence, ready to embrace Coriolanus but harboring jealousy).


When Volumnia appeals to her son for peace, he, at the last possible second, touches her, kneels and yields. He fatally embitters Aufidius, who kills him and then praises him.


This is a great production of a play that, like "Richard II," has personality and power on its mind.


Both productions are Shakespeare as he should be - stripped and clear and powerful. Get to Brooklyn if you can.




 

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