RICHARD III [Dramatic Revival] A: William Shakespeare; D:
Stuart Vaughan; S: Ming Cho Lee; C: Theoni V. Aldredge; L: Martin Aronstein; M:
John Carigliano; P: New York Shakespeare Festival; T: Delacorte Theater (OB);
6/23/70-8/22/70 (20)
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| Leon Russom, Donald Madden. |
One of three plays Shakespeare in the Park produced on
alternating nights in the series they called Wars of the Roses, which also included The Chronicles of King Henry VI, Parts I, II, and III (the latter
two compressed into a single work). It starred Donald Madden as the cunning,
monstrous Richard Crookback. The most positive response came from Clive Barnes,
who said the trio of plays seen together provided “one of the most intense and
engrossing theatrical experiences New York has seen in many years.” Producing Richard III in tandem with the others
made its part in the pattern of plays dealing with the wars between the houses
of York and Lancaster absolutely clear.
Barnes loved the vital, energetic, and rapidly paced action,
and the full panoply of striking effects. Julius Novick, practically echoing Barnes, thought it “the most
interesting work done in Central Park in several years,” with the finest
company ever seen there. John Simon (as so often) took a contrary view,
berating the direction, design, and acting—the latter with particular vehemence
for “a commonness, prosaicness and fuzziness [of speech] that would be
inconceivable in a provincial British repertory.”
Of the famous ghost scene that occurs the evening before the
Bosworth Field battle, Simon observed, director “Vaughan merely throws in a bit
of dry ice and has the dead parade down the tiny space that separates Richmond’s
tent from Richard’s (absurd enough in itself) as if it were the boardwalk in
Atlantic City, and they the contestants for the title of Miss Revenant.”
Donald Madden’s notices were largely favorable, one critic
putting his Richard on a par with those of Laurence Olivier, Alec Guinness, and
Alan Bates. His sinuous movement, genuinely evil expressions, vocal edge, and
the enjoyment he took in his machinations were widely approved. Barnes enthused,
“He crawls across the stage like a wounded, smiling spider, and yet his
vitality is deadly. As a hypocrite he oozes self-righteousness, as a solider he
spits venom. . . . This Richard is the . . . devil incarnate.” Simon was
cooler: “The competent but routine Richard III of Donald Madden manages to
tower over the rest of the cast.”
That cast included Drew Snyder as Clarence,
James Keach as Berkley, the still unknown Kevin Kline as Tressel, Susan
McArthur as Lady Anne, Ronny Cox as Lord Grey, Jeanne Hepple as Queen
Elizabeth, Robert Gerringer as Buckingham, Barbara Caruso as Queen Margaret,
Leon Russom as First Murderer and the Ghost of Prince Edward, Bette Heinritze
as the Duchess of York, Nicholas Kepros as the Ghost of Henry VI, and so on.
2.
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| Michael Moriarty. |
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| Powers Boothe, Robert Lesser, Michael Moriarty, Kurt Garfield, K.C. Wilson. |
Four years after its Central Park revival, Joseph Papp’s New
York Shakespeare Festival, now ensconced at Lincoln Center, where it would soon
outlast its welcome, offered another revival of Richard III, this one designed to showcase hot young actor
Michael Moriarty’s controversially offbeat interpretation of the title role.
Apart from his performance, which stimulated much debate, this was a venture
most critics considered misguided, however intelligently conceived.
Edwin Wilson, for one, missed the “arrogance and gusto” of
the flamboyant, melodramatically villainous hero, a role few were able to
disassociate from Olivier’s film performance. Moriarty was described as pallid,
neurasthenic, contemptuous, languid, fragile, and low-keyed. He wore his blond
hair long, breathed asthmatically, and used only a slight limp and a crooked
left arm with a black glove, but wore no hump. Martin Gottfried applauded the “novel”
approach as “sensational,” arguing that the actor had chosen wisely in making
the king “an emotional cripple” instead of a physical one by internalizing his
handicaps. “Moriarty is so creative, he actually seems to deepen during the
play.”
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| Michael Moriarty, Bette Heinritze. |
Others agreed that his acting was indeed “fascinating,” as
Douglas Watt put it, and “nervily and intellectually brilliant,” while also
completely wrong. Watt could not buy a Richard who killed more out of ennui
than from ambition, while Barnes reasoned that “He seems too objective in his
villainy and too ironic in his humor.” Yet others thought him miscast,
one-dimensional, even claiming that Moriarty “had done his best to bring [the
role] down to the level of a modern study in psychosis.” John Beaufort scoffed
at the star for sleepwalking through the performance. The actor of Richard, he
asserted, “cannot be slow-witted and comatose.” Those who recall Michael
Moriarty’s unique persona, captured in a number of his early movies, can perhaps imagine
what some of these reviewers were referring to.
Mel Shapiro’s modestly staged chamber theatre version
received lumps for being “listless and unimaginative,” in Simon’s words, and “routinely
workaday,” as Beaufort phrased it. Gottfried, on the other hand, dubbed it “one
of the finest productions of Richard III I
have ever seen.” The reviewers also differed over the quality of the supporting
company, many thinking it undistinguished. There was also disagreement over the
platform and walkway setting and the brown and black costumes.
Cast members included George Hearn as Clarence and Sir James
Tyrell, Tom Toner as Hastings, Marsha Mason as Lady Anne, Barbara Colby as
Elizabeth, Paul Winfield as Buckingham, Bette Heinritze as Margaret, Stephen D.
Newman as Catesby, Powers Boothe as Sir Walter Herbert, and so forth.
