Donnchadh O’Conaill takes us through the highs and lows of Durham Shakespeare Company’s ambitious production

Assembly Rooms,  29th April – 2nd May 2009

Shakespeare’s second longest play is appropriately epic in its scope and themes. Director Jonathan Bullock’s intention was to portray a post-war society where bonds of trust and friendship have been severed and the kind of opportunism personified by the eponymous Duke of Gloucester has free rein. The production occasionally delivered on this ambitious aim, but was for the most part a less clearly defined, though always solid, staging.

In a large ensemble, it was not surprising that Ollie Lynes stood out in the title role. Compared to some of Shakespeare’s other villains, Richard is unusually blatant – he puts on a pious front when circumstances require, and plots in private, but he openly admits to and justifies his crimes when wooing Anne (Gabriella Wass), whose husband he killed, and later when making a pitch for the daughter of Queen Elizabeth (Lily Howkins), whose husband and two sons he had dispatched. These scenes require a kind of showmanship and sophistry which perfectly suited the expressive style Lynes adopted throughout. His posture and movements also gestured towards Richard’s disabilities without letting them define the character. This portrayal allowed for some subtle moments, such as his cloudburst of rage at Ben Salter’s unfortunate Hastings, and the mingling of arrogance, paranoia and bloodlust in his voice and stare when he hears news of the princes’ deaths.

Richard’s aforementioned encounters with Anne and Elizabeth were two of the best scenes in the play, both actresses matching Lynes’ sallies blow for blow. Elsewhere, however, he tended to dominate proceedings, particularly early on when Richard is consolidating his power base amongst the nobility. These scenes are required by the plot, but some judicious cutting would not have gone amiss in a first half which alone ran to almost two hours. More generally, the play suffered from a lack of strong foils for Lynes, though this was arguably more to do with the script than the production. The closest we had to worthy counterweight was Gethin Alderman’s Buckingham, who delivered his stage-managed oratory well, but was less successful as Richard’s co-conspirator, never really convincing as a decisive influence on Richard’s scheming.

For me, the standout from the supporting cast was Charlotte Peters, who captured the corrupting effect of Margaret’s hatred, particularly in her spiteful dismissal of Elizabeth’s anguish, which she sees as an inferior rival to her own. This scene also featured Lucy Cornell as Richard’s mother Cicely; I thought she struggled at times to give extra dimensions to a character whose main job appeared to be informing us of her woes, but the curse she laid on Richard was perfectly delivered, a genuinely arresting moment at a stage when the play was threatening to become overwrought. Other supporting players who deserve mention include David Jackson and Caecilie Hobhouse, both well cast as the princes, and Tom Garnett, who had some of the funniest moments as the wretched Bishop of Ely.

Themes of curses, fate and the supernatural intertwine throughout the play, from Richard’s deformities through to the ghosts of his victims appearing the night before the fateful battle at Bosworth. This scene, a slowly developed tableau of actors framing the slumbering Lynes, their voices played on the PA, was perfect in concept, but the lighting was not as charged as it could have been, and I think the effect would have been strengthened by having the actors deliver their lines from where they stood. This indicates one weakness of the production, the lack of a striking atmosphere at crucial moments. This was not for lack of trying – we had smoke, ominous music between scenes, a sound-effect motif of dripping water, and piles of detritus on either side of the stage. This apparatus never quite came together, though; the sound effects and music, while technically precise, were somewhat generic, the junk was never integrated into any of the scenes and thus felt superfluous, and the lighting, while adequate, rarely cut the stage down to create the sense of claustrophobia which several scenes cried out for.

Other technical aspects of the show were more successful. I was uncertain about the ‘St Paul’s in the blitz’ backdrop, which seemed too vigorous a poke in the direction of relevance, but the flagstones delineated on the floor and the white curtains acting as columns created a simple but effective court setting. The use of matching pullovers was a neat way to indicate the hierarchy on stage, and special mention should go to Lynes and Kieran Sims (the murderer Tyrell), for sporting those time-honoured symbols of evil, a black leather coat and Man Uggs, respectively. The battle at Bosworth was vigorously staged, climaxing in a pleasing smorgasbord of corpses, and Hastings’ head (complete with Salter’s trademark red fringe) was a grotesque but apt touch.

The general limitation which prevented this production from fully realising its aims was  perhaps a lack of confidence in delivering its promise. The basically realist tone, while well attained, was not complemented by a sufficiently striking sense of a dislocated society in which a character such as Richard can define his own rules. To present the world of the play as a bellum omnium contra omnes required an expressive and symbolically astute production, giving us a feel for each character’s position, but also for their awareness of the fragility of the whole structure. This didn’t really come across: for example, if it wasn’t for the dialogue, I don’t think one would have grasped that the society depicted had been in the grip of war, or that the production pivoted on the notions of selfishness and passion. This shouldn’t be taken as a criticism of what was actually staged, but more as a comment on what might have been, if the director’s stated vision had been fully realised. As it was, we were left with a production with no shortage of strong individual performances, but which fell a little short of the excellence to which it, rightly, aspired.