RICHARD III
Renegade Theatre Company at Footsteps Theatre
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The anachronistic choice of a sword as Richard’s weapon is only one of the points at which Liermann’s analogy breaks down. Another is the complacency with which so many of Richard’s henchmen, in the midst of an allegedly anarchic milieu, resign themselves to their executions. And what are we to make of the vanquisher, Richmond, dressed in dazzling white and invoking God with the fervor of a crusader to the holy land–is he a social worker, a ghetto priest, or simply a cleaner, comelier rival gang leader?
Farwell’s Richard has been handicapped by the director’s decision to emphasize emotion over intellect. A “fighting machine”–as Richard is described in a program note–with a plan might have been interesting, but mindless evil quickly grows boring. There is no denying the craft of Farwell’s interpretation, but the way he delivers most of his lines in a hollow whisper, punctuated by occasional explosions of laughter, also grows repetitive. More compelling is Nelson Russo’s thoughtful Buckingham: Russo’s formidable size and parade-ground voice are notable in a production whose chief motif seems to be plenty of noise, and the louder the better.
Bertolt Brecht has sprinkled The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui with speeches from Macbeth–there’s even a scene where Roma’s ghost returns to haunt Ui. But we see the real significance of Brecht’s gangster allegory in the headlines of the newspapers hawked by a street vendor between episodes. After Dogsborough, the chairman of the Cauliflower Trust, suffers a stroke, the headlines read “Hindenburg’s Death Imminent.” Roma’s death is announced “S.A. Chief Roehm and Friends Ambushed.” And when Cicero falls to Ui the headlines declare “Nazis Invade Austria. Terrorized Electorate Votes Yes for Hitler.” By the time the epilogue warns us that “Although the world stood up and stopped the bastard / The bitch that bore him is in heat again” we understand how the horrors of the Nazi regime have been part of a long, continuous history of injustice and despotism. The price of freedom, says Brecht, is indeed constant vigilance.
