Critics round-up: Richard III with Kevin Spacey

Well the crit­ics loved much, if not all, of the Bridge Project’s much anti­cip­ated swan song pro­duc­tion of Richard III with Kevin Spacey. The pro­duc­tion is now at London’s Old Vic theatre before going on tour, fin­ish­ing with two months at the Brook­lyn Academy of Music from Janu­ary 10, 2012. Spacey’s per­form­ance above all wowed everyone:

There have, it’s true, been more creepily cha­ris­matic and more unnerv­ing por­tray­als of Shakespeare’s Machiavel­lian vil­lain. But Spacey’s per­form­ance com­bines instinct­ive, stage-commanding author­ity with lovely, droll touches of drop-dead understatement.

There are times when this Richard seems like a satanic second cousin of Vin­cent Price, with his little mock­ing tosses of the eye­brows, floun­cily dis­missive flaps of the hand, archly sub­vers­ive pauses in the middle of a list or a line and in the rather camp com­pli­city he sets up with his dupes onstage and with the audi­ence in the theatre. Equipped with a bru­tally dis­fig­ur­ing hump and hobbled by a Key­ser Söze-style limp, Spacey also com­mu­nic­ates a ter­rible sense of the furi­ous self-hatred, seeth­ing resent­ment and mater­nally fomented miso­gyny that evid­ently drive his Richard. Devel­op­ing ideas he ori­gin­ated in a sta­ging with Simon Rus­sell Beale in 1992, Mendes’s pro­duc­tion is a model of clar­ity, fluid­ity and pace.

said The Inde­pend­ent, and The Times agreed:

This is a proper, gruelling piece of live theatre, and con­firms Spacey’s mas­tery of it. Buck­ing recent trends, he plays Richard very crippled — a heavy cal­iper, the twis­ted gait of the “bunch-back toad”.

As he pro­gresses from cor­por­ate suit to the epaul­ettes and medals of a 20th-century dic­tator, his grot­esque­ness is exag­ger­ated. Yet his face — always tend­ing to wide-eyed bland­ness — ever evokes the dodgy-uncle charm that makes him cred­ible. Shakespeare’s Richard is always the witty fas­cin­ator, draw­ing us to com­pli­city: Spacey is mas­ter of the sexy side­long glance, drag­ging out shocked unwill­ing laughs.

But there were doubts too:

Com­pel­lingly watch­able though he is, how­ever, you never feel as you do with the truly great Richard IIIs that Spacey is expos­ing some­thing dark and dan­ger­ous that he has dis­covered within him­self. He offers a bril­liant dis­play of bravura tech­nique, but you never quite for­get that you are watch­ing a cun­ningly cal­cu­lated performance.

Though Mendes’s pro­duc­tion with his Anglo-American Bridge Pro­ject com­pany is flu­ent and lucid, it lacks the strik­ing inven­tion and dis­con­cert­ing dream­like atmo­sphere of Edward Hall’s pro­duc­tion now run­ning at Hampstead.

Said The Tele­graph. The Stage had prob­lems with the rest of the company:

Much of the sup­port act­ing is poor and poorly artic­u­lated, in Sam Mendes’ pro­duc­tion, the last throw of the Bridge Pro­ject, bound for New York (after Athens, Hong Kong and Spain) in the New Year. There’s an awful lot of shout­ing. The princes in the Tower are point­lessly played by fully fledged actresses.

and even with Spacey’s performance:

He is, of course, mes­mer­ising. The pace and vigour of the per­form­ance is relent­less… He’s dead behind the eyes, exchan­ging the party hat for a tunic of medals and dark glasses, malice and con­tempt play­ing at the corners of his mouth, each flicker regis­ter­ing pois­on­ously through­out the theatre. And yet it all seems played on one note.

The Arts Desk sort of agrees:

But is he dan­ger­ous enough? In a reveal­ing moment in a pro­gramme Q&A, Spacey says he’s “stopped drink­ing, smoking, everything to ded­ic­ate [him­self] to this char­ac­ter”. I rather wish he hadn’t. If there’s any­thing miss­ing from his per­form­ance, it’s dec­ad­ence, a whiff of sweaty cor­rup­tion and moral dis­in­teg­ra­tion — of the char­nel house; but these are small lacks in a full even­ing. Spacey’s obvi­ous enjoy­ment of the role wins us from the start in a pro­duc­tion rev­el­ling in its own unsur­pris­ingly cine­matic invent­ive­ness. Just be pre­pared for the inev­it­able peri­ods of bore­dom, which are not exactly Mendes’s fault. He has found his Richard and prob­ably won’t look for him again.

The Guard­ian’s superb Michael Bil­ling­ton has some very subtle observations:

What is impress­ive about Spacey is that he acts with every fibre of his being. His voice has acquired a rougher, darker edge. With his left leg encased in a cal­liper splint, he still bustles about the stage with fero­cious energy. But it is the eyes that one remem­bers. They reveal the depth of Richard’s self-loathing when Lady Anne suc­cumbs to his woo­ing and finds in him, as he does not, “a mar­vel­lous, proper man”.

The eyes also view the uppity Buck­ing­ham with a lethal, basilisk-stare. But the moment I shall cher­ish from this per­form­ance is that of Richard newly enthroned at the start of the second act. Spacey’s eyes express the moment­ary exulta­tion of power only to move in a second to a rest­less insecurity.

Inev­it­ably one has to ask what dif­fer­ence modern-dress makes to Spacey’s Richard. The pro­duc­tion doesn’t use it, like Richard Eyre’s with McK­el­len, to com­ment on the fas­cist poten­tial of 1930s Eng­land. Instead, con­tem­por­ary clothes remind us how today’s dic­tat­ors seek spuri­ous con­sti­tu­tional legit­im­acy and become skil­ful media manipulators.

Richard III marks the final pro­duc­tion of Sam Mendes’ Bridge Pro­ject, and although, as The Tele­graph notes,

This is an excit­ing and richly enter­tain­ing pro­duc­tion… that finally misses great­ness by a whisker.

The Inde­pend­ent says,

Spine-tingling, and a most com­pel­ling way for the Bridge Pro­ject to bow out.

Photo: © Tris­tram Kenton

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