Of the five openings in Stratford's knockout opening week, Richard III was the least exciting, but certainly anything but ordinary. This production achieved unusual interest by casting the title-role of the villainous king with actress Seana McKenna, a justifiably highly regarded leading lady at Stratford. McKenna will also repeat her performance later this season as Shakespeare's wife, Ann Hathaway, in Vern Thiessen's one-actor play, Shakespeare's Will.
Miles Potter is a competent Canadian director whose often unusual and formally choreographed stage action seldom surprises or affects me but whose sensitivity to the individual personalities of his actors, particularly the women, showcases their abilities in a rewarding manner. Here he has a strong Stratford cast of classical actors, but no one to rival the great players of the male roles we've seen before. His women, however, are a powerhouse line-up who especially with a woman playing the entirely dominating role of Richard skew the tragedy in a compelling feminist manner. There are no Shakespearean boy-actors trying to be females here!
I'm not happy with the character-voice that McKenna has adopted here: it's too thin and whiny to make Richard the nemesis he should be. But McKenna does mostly make us forget that she is a woman, and she has no trouble dominating the play or hitting the right emotional notes for Richard's egoism or viciousness. Still, I did find her Richard's strength to be questionable, both vocally and physically in her seeming to scurry around conspiratorially more than stand and dominate.
Yanna McIntosh is touching as Queen Elizabeth, whose sons Richard orders to be murdered. Martha Henry's truly monarchial Queen Margaret, is often vocally thrilling and seems less the tragically embittered old remnant of the former order than a humiliating still-present rebuke to her clearly lesser successors. And Roberta Maxwell's angry Duchess of York may be the strongest and most disdainful mother-figure I've seen in that role. This is hardly a landmark version of the familiar dark play, but it has its shiny moments that involved me and will be remembered.
