PERFORMANCE REVIEW OF RICHARD II
The play Richard II at Stratford directed by Jillian Keiley and a revolutionary adaptation of the play by Brad Fraser is an interesting take on the play when it opens with a full-on disco number and a king dressed in ruffles. Stephen Jackman Torkoff who plays Richard enters the stage snorting cocaine and gyrating with leather leather-clad angels in a 1970s New York discotheque, Studio 54. Right from the outset the audience has the impression of a monarch who is frivolous, and flamboyant. arrogant and immature.
The story line is closely followed even though the play is set in the 70s era during the disco era and the AIDS crisis. This is a story of a usurpation of a kingdom from a weak monarch. Richard II acquired the kingdom when he was only ten and believes in the divine right of kings. He believes that he is all-powerful and that he is untouchable. His decisions as a monarch seem irrational and arbitrary; he won’t listen to the sane advice of old Gaunt, and he insensitively seizes wealth belonging to his noblemen. He is extravagant and wasteful and spends money on lavish feasts. In addition to robbing the nobles Richard has burdened the common people with grievous taxes He is a flawed king, unfit to rule. He is callous in the face of grief and when he hears of Gaunt’s illness Richard wants to help him “to his grave immediately!/ The lining of his coffers shall make coats/ To deck our soldiers for these Irish wars”(2.1.60-62) Gaunt prophecies with his last breath that Richard is headed for doom: “His rash fierce blaze of riot cannot last. / For violent fires soon burn out themselves” (2.1.33-34).
. In Act Three, Scene 1, Bolingbroke has Bushy and Green brought forth and accuses them of having misled the king and causing Bolingbroke to be banished. Though he is accusing them of being poor advisors to the king, he uses imagery that suggests a sexual relationship:
“You have in manner with your sinful hours
Made a divorce betwixt his queen and him,
Broke the possession of a royal bed” (3.1.11-13)
The love relationship in the play between Richard and his cousin Aumerle is hot and steamy. There are scenes where the love between the two men is professed vividly and passionately. The play also set during the AIDS crisis accentuates same-sex relationships and pride in their sexual freedoms. The sexuality between the two men is expressed in a superbly staged scene where, surrounded by Richard’s angels, they bathe each other before coming together in a passionate embrace.
In Brad Fraser’s adaptation, we find a Richard who is Black, queer, and much more of a lover than a fighter who is deeply human and sensitive. The role of the king is a subversion as he asks the question of what a person in power looks like and how should they act:
What must the king do now? Must he submit?
The king shall do it. Must he be deposed?
The king shall be contented. Must he lose
The name of the king? A God’s name, let it go! (3.3.143-146)
Richard could not fathom that he could be stripped of his kinship, and he feels that the usurpation of his crown is a betrayal. He does not accept the fact that it is his greed, complacency, and arrogance that cause Bolingbroke and the nobles to be against him. Richard compares himself to a Christ-like figure and is the sacrificial lamb who has lost his divinity because of “villains, vipers, damned without redemption”(3.2.129). The crown is a narcotic for Richard and he knows that he has lost all his power and possibly his life.
“For God’s sake, let us sit upon the ground
And tell sad stories of the death of kings;
How some have been deposed; some slain in war,
Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed;
Some poisoned by their wives, some sleeping killed –
All murdered” (3.2.156-160)
