Character or Caricature?

I always go to a Shakespeare play with a mixture of anticipation and dread, never sure whether I am going to find myself enthralled or ennuyed. The Bard's language is now so distant from us that his words appear like a mountain in the mist; we get the vague outline but the details are often uncertain. It needs highly talented players and directors to ensure that the words cross the centuries with the maximum of meaning. The poetry of iambic pentameters, if poorly expressed, can leave many in the audience dozing or dazed.

On the other hand, the distance between the sixteenth and twenty-first century does allow every director and player to present their own take on the play and characters, so that every time we see Hamlet or Midsummer Night, A Winter's Tale or Tempest we get new insights into both the drama and the human condition.

So what to make of the Sam Mendes-directed, Kevin Spacey-starring production of Richard III at the Old Vic, which I saw last night? It took me a little time to get into the plot (my own fault: it is years since I last saw it and I'd made the mistake of not rereading the script beforehand), but once I had the characters and situation straight, I was gripped. The story of how Richard, Duke of Gloucester, cuts a swathe through the royal and noble houses of England to have himself enthroned, and how he is then deposed, appeals on several levels, and the pace of the play - one of Shakespeare's finest, although a relatively early work - as it shifts from public to private scenes and back, focusing most often on Richard but bringing others (his brother Clarence, the Duke of Buckingham, Queen Elizabeth etc) to the fore at different moments - holds the attention throughout.

Perhaps I should say that it is Mendes' pacing of the play which is masterly. Certainly there is little to fault in this production. The excellent set (by Tom Piper) begins as a bare room in an anonymous country house, closing in to become a prison and opens up to become a cathedral, a city, a battlefield. Catherine Zuber's costumes are less successful, starting off in the early twentieth century and ending up sometime around World War II. The players, with one exception, are uniformly good, with Haydn Gwynne, in the role of Queen Elizabeth excelling as the widow of a king and mother of the murdered princes. The overall production is crisp and clear, with - for me - unexpected but welcome humour.

So what's the problem? In a word, it's the star. Kevin Spacey gives an all-out, energetic, over-the-top performance that in many ways is admirable - and exhausting as can be seen from the drained, almost pitiful expression that he offered to the crowd at last night's curtain call. But his Richard jars when compared with the quieter intensity offered by the rest of the cast. In the first half of the play Spacey's crippled monster (throughout the three and a half hour performance he wears what must be a crippling leg brace) cannot stop moving and his head and his free hand frequently jerk to and fro out of control. And too often his facial expression gives way to a self-aware mockery, particularly noticeable when his reactions are magnified on a large tv screen. We are offered a caricature more than a character, a man who is too easily seen through. Surrounded by men and women who are no fools, it is scarcely credible that none would question his motives and that his murderous path to the throne would be so easy

It is only in the second half that Spacey's self-mocking personality - so effectively revealed in such films as The Usual Suspects and American Beauty - is completely submerged by Richard's evil and paranoid nature. Among several strong scenes, the one where he woos Elizabeth, whose children he has murdered, - to strengthen his position on the throne - is one of the most powerful pieces of drama that I have ever seen. The evil schemer who appears in that scene - cold, calculating, focused, with no time for mockery or excessive movement - is the man who should have dominated the stage throughout.

My companions had a similar reaction to me, although they expressed it less strongly. And whatever the weaknesses in his performance, Spacey's energy and domination of the stage held our attention throughout. As he took his final sweating bow, we applauded with admiration and with gusto, but we were not persuaded as half the audience were, to give him a standing ovation.