There was a lot I didn't like in the Propeller Company's performance of Richard III yesterday at the Huntington Theater. But there was so much I liked that I think the play was the best theater we saw at the Huntington all season. Richard Clothier is so unpredictable as Richard, snapping from straight soliloquies to slapstick humor, that he upsets our ability to understand him. He's scary.
The play seems to be set in a Victorian-era asylum, with white-masked characters resembling orderlies moving people and props quickly around the stage (those orderlies also sang Elizabethan tunes beautifully).
The direction chose to depend on speed, sacrificing the audience's ability to follow some nuances, and I liked that. One noisy murder after another pretty much tells us what's going on, and the workings of evil mind that's behind all the blood and pain is there to see.
It's an all male cast. This didn't work for me, or Marilyn, or our friends. The men who played the female characters were not made up as women, other than the dresses they wore. The effect was bizarre, and made me notice the incongruity.
The odd touches of slapstick obscured some scenes. I know that Shakespeare sprinkles comedy throughout, but this was over the top at times. The two murderers who kill poor Clarence in his cell are buffoons, okay, but as I remember them, at least one has genuine pangs of conscience. But that's lost in their Abbot and Costello routine.
What's a chainsaw doing in Victorian England? There's no good explanation for that. Never mind that Shakespeare inserted malapropisms in his plays.
Why did Tyrrell's soliloquy get axed? I was disappointed. Unlike the two clowns who kill Clarence, Tyrell is a fully thinking adult criminal. We lost out on his remorse and horror.
Yet, the energy of this production overcomes its flaws. It's worth seeing.
