Theatre: Richard II

The Donmar Warehouse has been transformed into a Gothic cathedral. I don’t know how they got the planning permission to do that; last time I checked it was a dinky central London theatre. Now you step out of the buzzing streets of the West End, hurry up the atrium’s chrome spiral staircase, are ushered through a set of black doors, and find yourself in the aforementioned Gothic cathedral.

A balcony supported by three elaborate arches hangs over the main floor. Behind the balcony, a wall vanishes into the air above. The wood is stained with gold, fading in patches from hundreds of years of footsteps. Golden sunlight filters through from the sides and the back. Bells peal in the silence and incense hovers in the air. A king sits on his throne. We don’t know how long the king has been sitting there, crowned, sceptred and impassive. Maybe hours. Maybe years. Otherwise, the cathedral is empty.

Alright, the Donmar hasn’t really been transformed into a cathedral. But Richard Kent’s set is so perfectly designed, that for the next two and a half hours, you really feel like you’re inside one. It is sparse and tasteful. Props are hardly used (the throne, two boxes for just one scene) leaving the stage bare of clutter and allowing the actors to move freely and without distraction in their medieval world.

Michael Grandage bids farewell to his role as the Donmar’s artistic director with a play that sees a king bid farewell to his crown. Grandage, however, hasn’t made such a hash of it as poor Richard II (Eddie Redmayne). It is an excellent production; the best I’ve seen (all three of them). Richard, on the other hand, outrageously seizes his nobles’ lands, taxes his people to starvation to fund his wars and falls for flatterers rather than friends. The thing is, you tend to forget what a bad king he is; he’s really quite likeable.

He’s just so…sensitive. Look at him there with his big sensitive eyes, his beautiful, sensitive speeches, mincing and skipping sensitively around the stage and sensitively clutching his sensitively wrought crown. Then in bursts Henry Bolingbroke (Andrew Buchan) and quite insensitively wrests that crown from him.

Okay, so Bolingbroke was unfairly banished and robbed of his inheritance, but he doesn’t “sit upon the floor and tell sad stories of the death of kings”, he is not so moved by music that he sings along in his prison (a beautiful touch) then begs the player to stop. He actually gets things done. He’s the man of action to Richard’s poet. And we don’t like him. This was helped along by some clever lighting (David Plater): whenever Richard was soliloquising, the stage was flooded with gold, whenever Bolingbroke was scheming, we were plunged into cold grey.

Both Redmayne and Buchan gave thoroughly mature performances. Buchan was all hard-nosed, quick-thinking business, macho and tough, mateishly slapping his broad-shouldered friends on the back. No we really don’t like him at all. Redmayne slipped to and fro, flashing childlike dazzling smiles, fluttering his eyelashes and finally acquiring a calm and gentle stillness by the end. Yes we do like him much more. Isn’t he charming? Shame he gets knifed…

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