The chapel of St John's College is a magnificent setting for this most stately of all Shakespeare's regal plays. (Even its battles are far off-stage, happening between rather than during the scenes.) And Tom Allen's production takes full advantage of that ancient splendour, with a version of the play presented in proudly traditional style. Saleem Nassar, up in the St John's organ loft, pipes out steady funeral dirges and musical announcements that seem the perfect embodiment of that ubiquitous renaissance stage direction, "Alarum". If the current Edward the Second in Stratford-upon-Avon is a royal court full of back-biting, action and unadulterated snogging, this one is closer to a sequence of tableaux, where the focus, to the exclusion of almost everything else, is on verse, verse, verse.
The actors' diction is perfect. Trochees and spondees are observed with rigour and respect. The iambic pentameter is king here, not Richard or Bolingbroke. You can almost hear the quill lift up at the end of each line and return to start the next. Yes, there is action, but it's kept somewhere close to the bare minimum. This is like listening to a BBC Radio version of the play recorded in 1955.
If that sounds like a criticism, it shouldn't. I bumped into my friend Cordelia at the performance. She has seen more Shakespeare than most students have had Najar's falafels, including visits to Stratford back in the 1960s. Cordelia told me that she loves nothing more than to hear young people recite Shakespeare, with the proper verse-speaking, one after another, in traditional clothes. "It's respectful, it's clear, it's beautiful." She noted with satisfaction that Arthur Bellamy, as Richard, is wearing the same gown that can be seen in the Wilton Diptych (which shows the historical Richard kneeling before the Virgin and Child). She adored this production. And she added that last week she saw the Nicholas Hytner production with Jonathan Bailey, currently wowing critics and audiences in London, and she absolutely hated it.
Personal preferences aside, it's clear that Tom Allen is seeking this very rectitude in his vision of the play, and he undoubtedly achieves it.
(It's a shame, by the way, that a student from Merton should be refused permission by his own college to mount the play in their own chapel. Earlier this term Magdalen had a scintillating version of Agamemnon in the chapel, and St John's has stepped in to help out here. Merton may well have had valid reasons for saying no, but I hope it wasn't just to avoid the inconvenience. Colleges should support and enable their students to explore and realise their potential in every way.)
Many of the actors involved in Richard the Second are veterans of the Jesus College Shakespeare Project, and it's fascinating to see how the commitment to clarity expounded by Peter Sutton in his productions is now starting to filter through to other shows.
However, for all the trust Allen and co have placed in The Text, I can't help feeling that there is something missing here.
Richard himself may well be the first character in English dramatic history to be genuinely psychologically complex. He is a mass of contradictions - fearful yet brave, decisive yet unsure, military yet bookish, spiteful yet loving. He is a real person whose motivations are not on the surface but concealed even from himself. Is clear reading enough to bring this out? Bellamy has a (nominatively determined) bell-like voice, as do all the actors involved - most notably Ollie Gillam as Bolingbroke. But I think the characters demand something more. What's lacking, for me (not for Cordelia) is a search: a search for human contact with the characters, for a point of relevance, a moment of insight that is unique, precious and birthed in the imagination of this actor/director, and nowhere else. This is what makes Shakespeare our contemporary. You need to dig deeper than diction. Otherwise all you have is a beautiful reading of the play - which is of course fine if that's what you want to create.
There is one scene in Richard the Second that stands completely apart in tone and style. It's Act V Scene ii, where the Duke and Duchess of York have an almighty, screaming marital tiff about their traitorous son Aumerle. It stands out as one of the high points of this production because it is just so damned emotional and radically domestic. The verse gives way, for once, to maternal panic, the levee breaks, and the audience is immediately and totally involved. As Bolingbroke himself says, "Our scene is altered from a serious thing" - and it's all the better for it. Likewise Megan Bruton, in the tiny role of the Duchess of Gloucester, finds despair and trepidation within the verse of her solitary scene, and brings it out with wrenching power.
There are other resonant moments in this deeply committed production. Opening and closing it with the living characters bowing to the corpse of the late King (Edward III at the start, Richard II at the end) gives the whole show a stirring sense of completion. And Tom Allen himself takes the role of John of Gaunt. He delivers the famous "scepter'd isle" speech with rare and moving beauty. (If only it didn't sound so much like a party political broadcast for Reform these days.)
In a world where every new Shakespeare production bends over backwards to find an original interpretation, this one has the courage simply to trust the text. I'd love to see them build on that starting point and find, not gimmicks, but true, personal insights. John Gielgud was great in his day, but I'm more excited to find the next Simon Russell Beale and Tilda Swinton. For sleeping actors long time have I watched. Maybe they were in St John's Chapel tonight.