Time Out Theater Review: "Richard III"
By: David Cote - Time Out New York
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The British American company known as the Bridge Project is wrapping up its three-year series of classical theater productions with a new staging of Shakespeare's "Richard III." The show, now playing at BAM, stars Oscar-winning actor Kevin Spacey and is helmed by Oscar-winning director Sam Mendes. Time Out New York contributing critic David Cote filed the following review. The Bridge Project’s farewell show is about a ruthless politician who slanders his rivals, affects a pious pose and displays a callous disregard for human life.
No, Sam Mendes did not commission a new drama about the Arab Spring or the race for the White House. But he and star Kevin Spacey do remind us in "Richard III" that tyrants and demagoguery are evergreen subjects for the stage.
The last history play in Shakespeare’s chronicle of the War of the Roses is an actor’s chance to show off his how deliciously evil he can be.
Spacey, he of the deadly blank stare and the contemptuous pout, is the perfect leading villain. With a left leg bound up in a brace and foot almost on tiptoe, the actor affects a twisted-in posture, matched by a killer’s deformed mind.
Mendes dresses his ensemble in nonspecific modern costume, avoids period or cultural specificity, and throws in a bit of live music and video. It’s a fairly handsome and lucid production.
But for all Spacey’s sinister charm, this uncut three-and-a-half-hour production doesn’t quite cohere into a persuasive or gripping rendition. Unlike previous Bridge forays, there is a vigorous leading man but an uneven supporting ensemble.
And Spacey does an awful lot of shouting to telegraph his self-loathing and overall brutishness. Much language is lost or mangled in the histrionics.
Kevin Spacey is always fascinating to watch and he is often transfixing, but he should have taken a cue from hunchbacked Richard and tried more cunning subtlety.