Richard III at Stratford Shakespeare Festival

Richard III

In the past, I have passed up chances to see such oddities as an all-female Taming of the Shrew and generally tend to view this sort of gender-bending casting as political correctness run amok. But having seen Seana McKenna distinguish herself on several occasions at Stratford, I gave in and saw her turn as Richard III. I’m glad I did, although the production failed to live up to its promise.

First, it must be said that McKenna is a much more than adequate Richard. Indeed, I preferred her rendition to Mark Rylance’s take on Shakespeare’s arch villain on Broadway. So much so that I and several companions were left wondering why, after demonstrating that this woman could take up one of Shakespeare’s greatest villains and make you forget her gender almost immediately, the director Miles Potter (who is also McKenna’s husband) didn’t ask more of her.

For all the technical deftness, McKenna’s portrayal seldom does more than skate along the surface of this endlessly fascinating role. Indeed, the entire production at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival’s Tom Patterson Theatre has a certain pro forma quality, that is not helped by the fact that the costuming and wigs make many major characters look confusingly alike. Never have I seen a Richard III that was more a catalog of murders and less a psychological portrait.

That’s not to say the production doesn’t have it’s virtues. McKenna has some fine moments and Potter uses the simplest of theatrical devices to make the ghosts who visit Richard on the eve of his defeat truly chilling. The stylized battle scene that ends to play is also a clever solution to the problems posed by the Patterson’s elongated and narrow playing space. But over all the production never takes flight and accomplished actors who have dazzled in other productions tend to fizzle here.