Arts
King of kings
Giles Gordon
Richard III Golden Girls (The Other Place, Stratford-upon-Avon) Intimate Exchanges: A Garden Fete (Greenwich) William Dudley's set for Bill Alexan- der's stupendous production of Richard III is monumental, a visual metaphor that relates the evil world of Dick the Turd chronologically to Shakespeare's earlier histories. Four mas- sive white tombs, stretching back perhaps to John of Gaunt, possess much of the stage, two on either side, with space for the action and what remains of battered Eng- land in between and in front. They are housed in a magnificent Decorated eccle- siastical building, with fine window tracery and mullions: Leo Leibovici's thrilling lighting suggests sometimes that we are in Westminster Hall (Richard's coronation), sometimes in the Abbey. Bosworth Field, at least to Richard, takes place, dream-like (recalling A Sleep of Prisoners), in this hallowed ground. Other scenes are played in front of a gorgeous white palace facade, Gothic England identified. The costumes are handsome too. The play is hardly its author's subtlest, and Mr Alexander pre- sents it in a grand, almost 19th-century manner. It is curious feeling a little guilty luxuriating in the visual splendours, the sheer theatricality of the occasion. Antony Sher takes as his key line 'I am determined to prove a villain'. No actor has surely worked harder at it, or in such glorious complicity with the audience, so much so, I'm afraid, that some less sea- soned theatregoers (mostly American tour- ists and schoolgirls) had a high old time giggling. This was not Mr Sher's fault. His Richard, garbed in Hamlet black, stands with body twisted into proportions that would fit a playing card, knave of spades or from the Tarot pack. He skims, darts and plunges about the stage on crutches as if he has four legs, malevolent waterboatman, less unbottled spider than hideous genie of the lump, a twisted cur whose shadow crawls up walls. When he woos Lady Anne (Penny Dow- nie, a wonderful characterisation, mesme- rised by the tyrant's sexuality), one crutch is used to trace her private parts. When, in front of the citizens of London, he is per- suaded by Buckingham (Malcolm Storry, rather overpowered) to be crowned, he wears religious habit with holy book, cruci- fix and rosary (his appearance recalling Mr Sher's Tartuffe) and is ultimate praying mantis. The Princes, not yet entombed in the Tower, fondle his crutches as if they're fetishes, and when young Richard of Gloucester leaps at him the new king reacts as if ravaged, howls fearsomely and beats his chest like a gorilla. When he wants Hastings's head (Brian Blessed, who seems to find the whole thing a great joke), the crutches act as tweezers to his neck. After his coronation, he is carried about on a litter-like throne, more troll king than cripple rejecting Lourdes. He beats on the chair with gold mace when desiring to be lowered or raised. In black armour with vast hump he becomes glittering Kafka- esque bug, eyes blazing like searchlights but static, dead. At Bosworth, Richmond (Christopher Ravenscroft, jolly good chap) stabs him in the back. He remains upright, on his knees, until the diadem of royalty, almost a crown of thorns, is wrenched from his head; then he topples over, the can- cered serpent destroyed. Roger Allam's Clarence extracts every nuance of meaning from the part, and Harold Innocent's Edward IV makes clear how appalling are the divisions in the kingdom. As for Patricia Routledge's old Queen Margaret, she is living history, a chronicle of the Wars of the Roses. It is a magnificent evening. `For five minutes we were the best,' says Dorcas (Josette Simon, her finest perform- ance, very strong), conceived in Christ- church, Barbados but lust my luck to be born in Dagenham': a worm in the bud? She and three other British girls, only one white, have won the women's relay at the Athens Olympics and the race, brilliantly staged in the tiny confines of The Other Place by Barry Kyle, is the climax to Louise Page's wordy but fascinating Gol- den Girls. The girls wear buttercup-yellow outfits with minuscule Union Jacks be- cause the team has been sponsored by Ortolan, manufacturers of the Golden Girls range of shampoos. Ortolan desper- ately want their team to win but their tough and gritty representative (Polly James), the gentle, determined Scottish trainer (Jimmy Yuill) and their doctor (Jennifer Piercey) are aghast to discover that Dorcas has taken illegal drugs. She alone is tested immediately after the race as the result of another of the girls (Alphonsia Emmanuel) having blabbed to a sleazy journalist. What is disturbing about Dorcas's remark is that she and the world would have gone on believing that the British team were best had they not been found out. The play is infinitely less about women in sport than about competitiveness, the the pressures brought to bear; on the insidiousness of sponsorship, and how the , sponsors try to ensure there are at least two white girls in, the team. It's riveting wondering which four of the five girls, all equally fast, will be selected for the final; who is most likely to crack; and whether the sponsors will receive their comeup- pance. If the runners don't seem that in- teresting as individuals, this is less Miss Page's fault than that the lives she shows are, simply, dedicated to being running machines. Kit Surrey's set turns the theatre into a stadium and, as so often at this venue, Mr Kyle nurses perfect ensemble acting from his cast of 13.
The second play (the third in the sequ- ence of eight) I saw of Alan Ayckbourn's marathon, Intimate Exchanges, dis- appointed. The characters, all but one as in the first play (the newcomer is Joe, Lionel's father, wheelchair-ridden, retired groundsman and sub-Larkin poet) seem different people rather than alternative facets of the same characters. Scene Three, where most of the farce and laughs were in the first play, is fairly unfunny. Perhaps there are diminishing returns, the more plays you see, rather than a growing complexity. I'll hope to report further.
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