THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, July 18, 1995 TAG: 9507180045
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E5 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MAL VINCENT, THEATER CRITIC
LENGTH: Long : 101 lines
DEFORMED. UNFINISHED. Sent before his time into the world. So grotesque that dogs barked as he walked by.
Richard III is a villain for the ages, fraught with diabolical intensity and unholy charisma.
The role is an awesome challenge that has served actors from Richard Burbage to Laurence Olivier's memorable 1956 film turn. In opening its 17th season, the Virginia Shakespeare Festival takes a third try at this melodramatic blood bath, which was Shakespeare's first great commercial success (and most historians claim was his first great play). The festival, which is an amazingly long-lasting state treasure, previously staged it in 1982 and 1985.
The infrequency of King Richard's visits makes any production a must-see for theater fans. The best thing that can be said about the latest version is that it maintains the high quality of classical staging that has been the mainstay of this festival. VSF actors are clearly trained to handle the formidable language. It is a real joy to notice that there is not one microphone in the theater. Here is live theater that is actually live - with all the risks. Here are actors who are trained to project rather than whisper into electronic gadgets.
The dialect coaches for this festival, if indeed they exist, are a great deal more effective than the directors. Too many of the actors play the meter rather than the characters. And, as usual, there occasionally seems to be a speed contest as to who can spit out these lines with the most precisely pronounced haste.
Joel Ladd of Virginia Beach is assigned the role of Richard. He gives it a game try but, alas, comes across as rather tame, introspective and unexciting. The character should be malignancy incarnate. Most of all, the venom should be coated with sugar. But this Richard is more a pest than a threat. The duplicity seldom comes through.
Ladd handles the language well, and it is to his credit that he does not use the overabundance of makeup and humpbacked grotesqueries that most actors hide behind in the role. He is a lean and squirming Richard, complete with limp.
Keith Fowler's production, though, fails to take the chances that could have let the audience into the game. Perhaps there is a fear that the role might become camp. Even Olivier took that rap. The best ``Richard IIIs'' make the audience feel guilty for their sympathy for the villain. The best moments are always, as here, when he steps out of the play to take the audience into his confidence. We see his conniving every step of the way, but we should not wonder that he is successful at duping the rest of the world. Here, we do wonder.
A routine, tame, ``safe'' version of ``Richard III'' will just not do. A merely ``effective'' reading seems less than it would with other plays. This is a Saturday night melodrama which - surely not historically accurate - was designed primarily for the entertainment of Queen Elizabeth's court and political temperament.
The text has been cut to give the play a brisk running time of two hours and 15 minute (including intermission). It sends the audience out in time to catch the 11 o'clock news, but much of the obsessive detail is lost. Here, Richard's ascent and fall seem quite sudden.
We get all the desperation of his call, ``A horse, a horse! My kingdom for a horse!'' but we miss the chilling, vile moment that should go into the reading of a line like ``I am not in the giving vein today.'' The heat is turned up, but we miss the chill.
Although it is a showcase for the lead actor, this play has one of Shakespeare's dullest groups of supporting roles. Most of them live to be victims. Michael Barto seems a rather tame Buckingham, Richard's partner in conniving. Tracy Larson is a suitably terrified Lady Anne, afflicted with Richard's lewd courtship.
Charles Houghton's lighting design is particularly effective in contrasting the darkness of the manipulations with the lightness of the unsuspecting victims. He even manages to disguise, a bit, the festival's venerable set. It is a handsome-looking production, highlighted by Patricia Wesp's costumes and a rousing finale fight scene suggesting the battle of Bosworth.
``Richard III'' is no time to play it safe and, in not encouraging his lead actor to go for the outlandish humor of the role, director Fowler has turned out a serviceable less than exciting version. Still, the trip to Williamsburg is well worth the time. In a world in which Jason and Freddie are our resident horrors, King Richard can still show them a thing or two about murder. ``King Richard III'' runs in repertory with ``The Merry Wives of Windsor'' through July 30. ILLUSTRATION: Photo by GLEASON/VISCOM
Jamieson Baker of Williamsburg, left, and Joel Ladd of Virginia
Beach star in ``King Richard III.''
THEATER REVIEW
What: ``King Richard III'' by William Shakespeare, presented by
the Virginia Shakespeare Festival
Who: Directed by Keith Fowler, featuring Joel Ladd as Richard
III, Tom Summers as Buckingham and Tracy Larson as Lady Anne with a
cast of 30 players
Where: Phi Beta Kappa Hall, Williamsburg
When: Tonight, Thursday and Saturday at 8 p.m., contin-uing July
26, 28 and 30.
Tickets: $12 (group rates available)
Call: 221-2674
by CNB