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RICHARD II REVIEW Something about a man who wasn't meant to be king Comment By Bill Varble for the Mail Tribune MailTribune.com By Bill Varble for the Mail Tribune Posted Jul. 10, 2016 at 12:01 AM By Bill Varble for the Mail Tribune Posted Jul. 10, 2016 at 12:01 AM » Social News The Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s affecting new production of “Richard II,” directed by Bill Rauch, opens with a casket ruling the spare stage of the Thomas Theatre, reminding us that it’s a murder that set events in motion. The Duke of Gloucester lies dead. Henry Bullingbrook (usually Bolingbroke) has come before King Richard to accuse Thomas Mowbray of the murder. When Mowbray (Michael Sharon) demands trial by combat, Bullingbrook (Jeffrey King), despite the king’s (Christopher Liam Moore) appeals for peace, is eager to oblige. As they square off, Richard, who has Gloucester’s blood on his hands, halts the battle. Then he throws the screaming hissy fit of a disturbed child before banishing Mowbray for life and Bullingbrook for 10 years, which he instantly reduces to six. Shakespeare thus kicked off the Henriad with a murder arranged by a dreamer never equipped to be a monarch. The Bard was telling his audience that the next 200 years were gonna be a bumpy ride. The four plays of the major tetralogy were written after the minor tetralogy, but they precede it chronologically. In “Richard II” Shakespeare begins an eight-play narrative that dramatizes the Wars of the Roses and the founding of the Tudor dynasty. The OSF will produce all eight in chronological order over the next few years. Many of the characters jump from one play to another. “Richard II” is dominated by the personality of Moore’s introspective fantasist, Richard. But its outer events are propelled by the man of action, Bullingbrook. It’s often said that Richard would have made a better poet than king. Moore takes it further. Richard came to the throne of England as a boy, and Moore gives us the feeling that he’s still a little boy inside, playing at being a king. Bouncing around Sibyl Wickersheimer’s spare, contemporary set, with the Thomas arranged in the round but one end section used as a playing space, Richard claims himself anointed by God (and thus beyond the will of mere flesh and bone). But he covets like a boy’s playthings the paraphernalia of his office (crown, orb, scepter) and surrounds himself with flatterers. In a high, distracted voice, Moore delivers some of Shakespeare’s loveliest lines (the play is entirely in verse). He gives the sense of a boy who’s playing with language but isn’t grounded in the knockabout world outside. He throws another unhinged fit when Gaunt, his uncle and Bolingbrook’s father, calls him a “landlord of England,” a slam at his extravagant taxes. “Am I not King?” he wails in another scene, smacking his forehead. “Are we not high?” The play was originally labeled a tragedy, but Richard is no Lear or Othello. When Bullingbrook comes against him, he will surrender everything with shocking ease. The action of the play is the easy arc of his descent. “Richard II” is unusual in that it has no physical action, battles, duels, romance. Yet this production serves up white-knuckle tension straight through. The playing makes it clear that the characters have something crucial at stake in every scene. Bullingbrook represents a new kind of leader that will supplant the medieval king by divine right. King plays him as a Machiavellian schemer, but one who, unlike Richard, is comfortable in his own skin. The scene in which Richard, ever the narcissist, cries, “How soon my sorrow hath destroy’d my face” and smashes the mirror employs a stunning theatrical effect. If Richard is deluded, Bullingbrook is scary, a cynic who will stop at nothing. There is an alternative. It’s presented in metaphor by the gardeners, who observe ruefully that it’s a pity Richard didn’t treat England like a gardener tending his plot. Moore’s Richard becomes more sympathetic after he’s deposed (we like underdogs), but his arc stops short of redemption, and his final act, sometimes seen as one of bravery, looks more like a lost soul flailing in disbelief and rage. By Bill Varble for the Mail Tribune MailTribune.com By Bill Varble for the Mail Tribune Posted Jul. 10, 2016 at 12:01 AM » Comment or view comments Reader Reaction » STAY INFORMED Email NewsLetter Sign Up Today Sign up for our newsletter and have the top headlines from your community delivered right to your inbox. 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