Review: Richard III by Austin Drama Club
by Michael Meigs
He was standing at the gate when I walked up. East 7th and Concho. This looked like the place.
"Is this where the play is?"
He looked me over.
"Yeah. Go ahead. The house is open."
Yes, it was open. And it was a house. Dark inside, with rough fabric curtains hanging between the entry and the kitchen, and then between the kitchen and the living area. Cooler this time, with an air conditioner laboring away in the depths of the room. Singly or in couples, the audience gathered. Friendly enough. Waiting, though. Quietly murmuring.
The lights dimmed, a curtain moved aside. Barely visible in the low light, a man in a scruffy suit stood there, then lurched forward toward us, into the playing space.
"Now is the winter of our discontent. . . ."
Richard III is a dark power in a dark world. He opens the play by avowing himself a villain, already having slandered his brother Clarence to the King, in order to set deadly hate between them. Julio Mella as Richard III gloats that he is subtle, false and treacherous and proves it to us in this highly stylized Warner Brothers' gangster world. Mella toys with a chessboard, signaling the complicated game his protagonist is playing.
Mella as director gives us a savagely cut text with a clever relocation of Richard's evil and self-seeking into an all-American fantasy land. The king becomes "the don"; when regretting the execution of Clarence, the don evokes J. Edgar instead of "Oxford" when reproaching his courtiers:
Who told me in the field at Tewkesbury,
When Hoover had me down, he rescued me:
And said dear Brother live, and be a King?
King Richard takes the alarums in Act V via the crank telephone hanging on the wall of his office, and he aims his aggrieved exclamation "My kingdom for a horse!" against his chess board, for by betrayals and murders he has deprived himself of knights and supporters to quell rebellion. The phantoms of shared nightmares deliver to his opponent a cord, employed with abrupt efficiency to garrote King Richard executioner-style.
No, this is not a clean, classic Richard III like that played at Shakespeare at Winedale. With a cast of only eight actors, a concept, and a stage that suggests the crowded dance floor of a speakeasy, Julio Mella and the Austin Drama Club have translated Richard's evil into quaint modern terms -- modern, in that the early twentieth century setting is almost within living memory, and quaint, because the story mirrors popular fictions, further reinforced by the Godfather novels and movies.
Where it works, it works really well. Julio Mella has a surging wickedness and jaded eye. Trim, enigmatic Christopher Harris plays Richard's confederate Buckingham with attitude and vocal styling that are unmistakeably James Cagney. He does so with a wry appreciation for Shakespeare's language that helps sell us the whole concept.
Scenes of murder are played on the claustrophobic inner space revealed beyond the curtain, where condemned Clarence and, later, condemned Gray deliver their lines while shoveling out their own graves. Executioners with firearms loom on a platform next to them.
At moments the actors get carried away and push beyond stylization into parody, particularly when they deliver speeches as voices off. An added "yeah!" or "see--" in a telephone report to Richard turns the unseen voice not into Edward G. Robinson but into the Bugs Bunny cartoon version of Little Caesar, seriously swaying our suspended disbelief. An imitation of Mel Blanc imitating Edward G. Robinson.
This is a theatre of friends, and perhaps because of that,the acting is uneven. Richard Bateman as Lord Gray speaks his lines as if he were born to them; every syllable counts in his structures of meaning. Erin Jo Enoch does some scenery chewing as the outraged Queen Margaret, fulminating against perfidious Richard so emphatically that she pops her final p's like firecrackers.
Jennifer Fielding as Queen Elizabeth is an intimidating presence. This character has a delicious word duel with Richard late in the play. Richard urges her to persuade her daughter the princess to marry him, and in a display of guile, reasoning, intimidation and false repentance Richard extracts from her a promise to raise the matter. In this production Fielding delivers all the words, but her lack of inflection makes them difficult to follow. Her rapid-fire delivery masks entirely the emotional movement of the beleaguered queen, who is by turns indignant, frightened, and sorely tempted. Richard's astounding triumph in this scene is marked by her closing exchanges with him:
Queen. Shall I be tempted of the Devil thus?
Richard. Aye, if the Devil tempt you to do good.
Queen. Shall I forget my self, to be my self - -
Richard. Aye, if your self's remembrance wrong your self.
Queen. Yet thou didst kill my children.
Richard. But in your daughter's womb I bury them.
Julio Mella delivers. Richard's power is there, the glistening, plausible surface of evil.
Given the bold but potentially confusing interpretation of this 90-minute production, you would do well to have a notion of the story beforehand. There's no program or synopsis for the faint of heart.
And the guy at the gate? As I was finding my way out through the kitchen, he stopped me for a word.
He's Japhy Fernandes, artistic director and, for this production, light designer. (The Austin Chronicle got it wrong -- Japhy didn't play Richard III, although he is scheduled to play King Lear in December.)
The Austin Drama Club stages its final performances this coming weekend. Japhy takes reservations for the show at japhyfernandes@live.com.
Next up is After The Fall by Arthur Miller, September 17 - October 3.
EXTRAS
Click for Program for Richard III by Austin Drama Club
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Richard III
by William Shakespeare
Austin Drama Club
to be revealed
Austin, TX, 78700
