Continuing their march backward chronologically through the second tetralogy of Shakespeare's histories -- R II, H IV, 1 &2, H V -- the ART has arrived at the most poetic of the lot, verse-laden Richard the Second. Previously, under various directors, mountings have attempted to free these family dramas from the trappings of traditional staging and requisite pageantry, concentrating on the intense and often violent interaction between the Plantagenant heirs and the court, a collection of siblings, cousins, and other relations. Earlier productions at the Loeb, in which Bill Camp (Bolingbroke) appeared as Henry V aka Prince Hal, were not without controversy, but still clearly Shakespearean. Enter Robert Woodruff, the regisseur of this current exercise in experimental theatre and textual deconstruction.
With what was intended to be his opening salvo as artistic director designate -- one of retiring Harvard President Rudenstein's final appointments -- Woodruff has outdone previous ART extravaganzas with an openly gay title character and a bevy of buff companions, impressive scenery mechanics, heavy-handed musical references, eccentric acting in peculiar costume, and a variety of striking individual scenes, including dumbshow. The result is a three-ring circus, striking as a whole, but incomplete as drama, structured around obscure cultural references. What audiences have seen as the play was pruned during previews is a flood of modern metaphors, some of which might have provided a basis for subtle reinterpretation, poured out in wretched excess and theatrical hodgepodge.
Scholars have long noted that Shakespeare's history play, "Richard II", created after Marlowe's "Edward II", owes a debt to the dramatic audacity of the latter. But Woodruff has willfully confused the two, taking superficial shared plot elements and lineage -- Richard II was Edward II's grandson -- and fashioned his own perverse subtext. To do so, the director begins the evening in dumbshow with the murder of the elder Gloucester, Bolingbroke's uncle, in a gay bathhouse, while a clownish figure, Thomas Derrah, later identified as the title character, is seated to one side staring into a mirror surrounded by flowers. Then, while the murderer reclines suggestively on the body, Alvin Epstein, as Gaunt -- memorable this season as Tiresias -- and Karen McDonald -- seen this winter as Mother Courage -- now Gloucester's widow, try very hard to do Shakespeare wearing greygreen costumes with outlandish mauve ruffs in the duet exposition scene which occurs in the actual text after the original opening scene of the king's pomp. Whatever elevation these two veterans achieve is quickly dissolved by Derrah's first entrance in pseudo-Elizabethean drag wearing a peculiar ornament on his bald head, surrounded by catamites with Jodi Lin, as Queen Isabel, in a purple sheath. The ìfasten your seatbeltsî sign has been turned on.Catherine Zuber's costumes are the flashing warning .
All this chicanery might be amusing if the points being made weren't ultimately banal. In a year-long search for reinterpretation, the director and his lead have merely managed to reveal that artistic endeavor can be self-destructive, particularly when budget is no object. The result is a series of bizarre exercises in moderne theatricality which might have been useful in the studio, but which need translation into mature drama before inviting the audience in.
Bill Camp's Bolingbroke is one of the few exceptions to the swirling excess of this production. His character has a through line of action even when confronted with egregious over-staging. Alvin Epstein's Gaunt, after surviving the opening, almost manages make his "England" speeches soar, even though strapped to a propped-up gurney while Richie and his boys cavort on dust-covered furniture in a setting which unfortunately echoes the ART's "Doctor's Dilemma" earlier this season. Epstein doesn't even get a second chance, since his announced appearance as the Gardener was cut from the production -- perhaps by mutual agreement. John Douglass Thompson, the company's major African-American member, as York, torn between many loyalties, does yeoman duty under not quite believable conditions, but Karen McDonald gets to play his wife with a touch of comedy -- too little, too late. The rest of the cast would probably been quite acceptable in a more conventional production, but here seem to be going through the paces without a plot in sight. Benjamin Evett, for example, still sporting his blond dye-job from "Animals & Plants", gets to over-act as Mowbray bemoaning his total banishment, then exits with a splash through the unexplained trap in the center of the stage, only to rejoin the play as Scroope wearing a scraggly gray wig. The dive was probably intended to emphasize the waters separating Norfolk from his home, and lets the audience guess how this device will be used later in the show.
In a strange way, this production and its source(s) mimics what may be going on at the ART itself. One reign -- founder Robert Brustein's -- is ending, an heir has been designated, and there's rumbling in the commons. A long-time faithful member of the court, who may feel that his recognized talents have not been appropriately challenged over the years joins the incoming side to make a bold and personal statement. Some older members of the company may choose to retire. There are no prominent actresses currently working regularly for the ART. The local critical brouhaha might have been predicted and could lead either to increased interest in the coming season or to even more departures from the season ticket holders. There might be a real drama there. Stay tuned.
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