Shakespeare’s Richard III

      Probably written in 1592, immediately after the Henry VI trilogy, Richard III is the culmination of Shakespeare’s dramatization of the Wars of the Roses, which he had begun in the three parts of Henry VI. It has, therefore, a double focus: it concludes the story of those wars, and presents a full-length portrayal of Richard himself. These two aspects are indissolubly linked. The characters constantly refer back to events of the past, especially to Queen Margaret’s ritual slaughter of Richard’s father York and his young brother Rutland, and to Richard’s (and his brothers’) murder of Margaret’s son at the battle of Tewkesbury, which saw the final defeat of Henry VI, Margaret, and the House of Lancaster. There is a strong sense of the past coming home to roost. One by one, characters reap what they have sown; and while some of them blame or curse Richard, he embodies in himself what they have been: he is the inevitable outcome of their destructive violence.

      To this extent, Richard III dramatizes the ‘Tudor myth’, history as the Elizabethan chroniclers presented it, culminating in the Battle of Bosworth, where Richmond – the future King Henry VII and so the grandfather of Elizabeth I – ends a century of civil strife with the establishment of the Tudor dynasty. But, as always, Shakespeare complicates the pattern. Richard is apparently a classic image of villainy, symbolised by his deformity: a crippled mind in a disabled body. Yet he is not only the centre of dramatic vitality: he is also charming, sympathetic even, as the ‘virtuous’ characters who oppose him are not. From his celebrated opening speech, his candour about his aims lures the audience into complicity with him: we become his accomplices in his bid to seize power. Truthful to us, he exposes, with great sophistication, the vanity and hypocrisy of the political and social world.

      The first half of Richard III dramatizes Richard’s rise; the second half his fall and his defeat at Bosworth. An important aspect of this defeat is that the character who tricks so many others is himself tricked – by Stanley’s treachery, but still more by Queen Elizabeth, the widow of King Edward IV. In a central scene, Richard woos Elizabeth to agree to his marriage with her daughter (sister of the princes in the Tower, whom he has just murdered), in order to secure his political safety. This scene employs the same line-by-line cut-and-thrust of Richard’s earlier wooing of Lady Anne, and Richard thinks that, as with Anne, he has won the encounter, contemptuously dismissing Elizabeth as he had earlier dismissed Anne: ‘Relenting fool, and shallow changing woman.’ But he is wrong. Elizabeth is a tougher opponent than Anne had been; we subsequently learn that she has promised her daughter not to Richard, but to his opponent Richmond. The supreme irony of the play is that the great trickster is himself the victim of a trick. Is the glorious conclusion of the play more equivocal than it seems?

      Roger Warren

      Designing Richard III

      Designing a visual narrative for Richard III that echoes Shakespeare’s text is, in some respects, fairly straightforward. Like Macbeth, the story relies on a central character’s journey into a disturbing underworld of psychosis and ultimate self-destruction. The design can’t afford to hold up the momentum of his slide into a hell. What the play allows for is the full range of visual and physical possibilities for that journey – what is the context in which such a character can surface with such ferocity and then be conquered? Who will be responsible for creating his nemesis? How can we actually see the workings of Richard’s mind in a similarly dramatic way to the confessions and quips he makes to the audience...and should we see them?

      Propeller Theatre celebrates the contribution of all performers who, in many productions, knit together as a chorus who collectively personify a subtext – the identity of this group is an intriguing design challenge. They add significantly to any image as passive voyeurs or protagonists- in-waiting half in, half outside the story. Here, we explored the internal motivations, exposed them and expanded them into a physical reality – splitting Richard’s psyche into a squad of masked, white-coated but grubby Victorian hospital orderlies that looked more comfortable in Bedlam than exposed on stage.

      The logical progression of this idea was a scenic world of mobile surgical screens and a pivotal operating table that contorted into a throne, tomb or warhorse. A functional zip-up tower from a builder’s merchants became ‘the bloody Tower’ complete with a range of DIY tools of mass destruction and the whole space framed by contemporary trussing that supported the occasional use of a full-height, slashed, plastic abattoir curtain. The design was therefore more of a psychological space than any geographical location but constantly counterpointed by the anchor point for Propeller’s history cycle, an ubiquitous flagpole and cross of St George.

      Richard III can at times read as a tragic-comedy as much as a warped historical commentary and it certainly plays like that on stage. It’s an entertaining sideshow of gothic horror but also a warning shot across England’s bows. If handled deftly, design has the ability to reflect the clash of themes and tones that Shakespeare composes by making references to recognisable icons that appear and evaporate hopefully before the audience loses its faith in a familiar image (cliché?) and therefore the production’s credibility. The restlessness of the history plays is a set and costume designer’s gift to make visual triggers that affirm our collective memory, and make it a fleeting but powerful reality.

      Michael Pavelka

      Scenic design for Richard III

      Music in Richard III

      Propeller’s music is either written by the company or sourced from music we know. We play or sing our suggestions to Edward Hall, and he decides what goes into the production, and at what point in the play. Having adapted Rose Rage from the Henry VI plays, Edward wanted Richard III to have a similar soundscape – English choral

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