Direct from a sold-out run in London's West End, the critically-beloved, Shakespeare's Globe productions of Twelfth Night and Richard III come to Broadway for a 16-week limited engagement. Two of The Bard's finest plays are performed in repertory by a remarkable cast featuring two-time Tony Award winner Mark Rylance (Jerusalem, Boeing-Boeing), Golden Globe nominee Stephen Fry (Wilde, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows) and Tony Award nominee Samuel Barnett (The History Boys).
These classics are presented in the custom of how Shakespeare's plays were originally staged, with an extraordinary all-male company playing male and female roles; actors participating in the pre-show ritual of dressing and preparing their make-up on stage, in front of the audience; music played live on traditional instruments; and lighting created almost exclusively by 100 on-stage candles, adding to the intimate and authentic atmosphere. This is delightfully funny, timeless Shakespeare at its absolute finest, and it is not to be missed!
Richard Duke of Gloucester (Mark Rylance) is determined that he should wear the crown of England. He has already dispatched one king and that king's son; now all that stands in his way are two credulous brothers and two helpless nephews - the Princes in the Tower. And woe betide those - the women he wrongs; the henchmen he betrays - who dare to raise a voice against him. Monstrous, but theatrically electric, Richard is Shakespeare's most charismatic, self-delighting villain, reveling at every moment in his homicidal, hypocritical journey to absolute power.
The secret villain that Rylance unmasks in Richard’s soliloquies also goes against the grain, an assassin consumed less by envy and hatred of his victims than loathing for his own twisted self. It isn’t political ambition but psychic pain that compels him to destroy all the people who genuinely love him, among them his brother Clarence (Liam Brennan, a manly Orsino in “Twelfth Night” and here a most poetic murder victim); his nephews, the young Princes in the Tower; and, most fatefully, his loyal partner in dark deeds, the Duke of Buckingham, played by Angus Wright in full, sonorous voice (at least, on those nights when he isn’t making a wonderful honking fool of Sir Andrew Aguecheek in “Twelfth Night.”) In the end, Richard has no one left to hate but himself, which he finally acknowledges in his last soul-baring soliloquy (“Alack, I love myself / Alas, I rather hate myself”) on the eve of battle at Bosworth field.
Only in the second half, do we fully realize we’re in the ice-cold company of a madman. I won’t tell you how Mr. Rylance achieves this, except to say that in switching between what he seems to be and what he is, this Richard has stripped his own gears. He ends up in limbo, without a part to play.
Videos