Richard II







By Michael Coveney
The Daily Mail
13 April 2000



Michael Coveney at last night's first night



Richard II by William Shakespeare: Gainsborough Studios, Shoreditch




Hollywood on the Canal is what they called the Gainsborough Studios in the heyday of Alfred Hitchcock, Will Hay and Margaret Lockwood. Star power returned to the abandoned site last night with Ralph Fiennes and Linus Roache leading a swift, impressive revival of Shakespeare's glorious chronicle about the death of kings.


Glenn Close and Miranda Richardson lit up the audience, too. But they were just sitting in it.


The great building on the Grand Union Canal, once a railway power station, latterly a whiskey bottling plant and carpet warehouse, will soon be converted into desirable lofts and penthouses.


Meanwhile, the Almeida in nearby Islington has colonised the place to launch this season of Richard and, later, Coriolanus, two masterpieces about the abuse of power and vengeful banishment.


Fiennes is a madcap, slightly camp monarch who swops his kingdom for a grave. He is a lost, sardonic boy, never the saintly martyr of John Gilegud or David Warner vintage.


Always more agitated and interesting on stage than he is on screen, he gives his voice full range and unbuttons the enigmatic anonymity of, say, his Maurice Bendrix in The End of the Affair.


He shows a fine spirit under pressure, linking his buffeted regal status with a controlled, jerky delivery of the musical verse that is both odd and engaging.


Jonathan Kent's production is more decoratively medieval than is the current, more analytical and penetrating version starring Samuel West.


But there is a pleasing contemporary harshness in the black-garbed courtiers.


The play is laid out across a real lawn, with buttercups, signifying the garden of England metaphors that characterise the dramatic argument.


Fiennes and Roache - who has been a wonderful Richard himself in Manchester - could well swop roles, as they could, also, in Coriolanus.


That fascinating option has been resisted. But both are superb.


And there is passionate support from Barbara Jefford, from Emilia Fox as the weeping queen and Oliver Ford Davies as a blustering York.


An exciting night signals a glorious new project.

 

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