To kick off its season devoted to plays about "regime change," Shakespeare's Globe is offering Richard II, in which the ineffectual king is forced to surrender his crown to his cousin, Henry Bolingbroke, who thus becomes King Henry IV. For this production, director Tim Carroll has tried to duplicate as closely as possible what would have taken place in the original Globe Theatre at the end of the reign of Elizabeth I in 1603. Consequently he is using an all-male cast (there are only four female characters), carefully researched period costumes and props, and a musical ensemble that includes recorders, sackbuts, natural trumpets and dulcian.
In the tradition of the old actor-manager, the title role is played by Mark Rylance, who is also the theater's artistic director. He is always a mesmerizing figure on stage, and it is hard to takes one's eyes off him. He wastes no time in conveying his love of the trappings and perquisites of kingship. Like a child, he loves to dress up. When we first see him, he is dressed in an ostentatious green outfit with a plumed hat. By the time he delivers his "Dear earth" speech, he is dressed all in gold. In the deposition scene, he wears silver garb and carefully polishes a place to sit on a bench. When the sick and dying John of Gaunt comes in, he puts a handkerchief over his face, and strikes the old man with a bunch of flowers. On being told that Gaunt is dead, Richard elicits a gale of laughter by making an uncaring and dismissive gesture while saying, "So much for that." Rylance mines the text excessively for comedy when his character ought to be more pitiful. Though he speaks well, there is more poetry than he chooses to convey.
Liam Brennan, dressed in black, is solid as the usurping Bolingbroke. John McEnery delivers Gaunt's long "sceptred isle" speech admirably, and Terry McGinity is a strong Mowbray. Michael Brown as Queen Isabel looks gorgeous in a lace-bedecked red and white gown, as does Chu Omambala's pink garb for the role of the Duke of Aumerle.
