Nothing Tragic About ‘Richard’

What to do with a tragedy that’s not that tragic? Shakespeare’s “The Tragedy of King Richard the Second,” produced by Veronica T. Golin ’07 and Jason M. Lazarcheck ’08, which played at the Ex from April 27 to 29, is the story of a king brought down by his own poor decisions and inattention to important affairs of state. For all his flowery speeches bemoaning his fate and defending the divine right of kings, he comes across as more whiny than righteously aggrieved: cheer up, emo king.

Director Adam G. Zalisk ’07, working from an adaptation by Jeremy R. Funke ’04, solved this dilemma by refusing to play it straight, undercutting many of the most dramatic lines with sarcasm or drunkenness (or a combination of the two). Speeches that could have had an air of pathos were delivered with a dismissive eye roll. Even when Richard (Brian C. Polk ’09) is in trouble and speaks about his worries, he fails to recognize his own part in his mishaps, lending these lines a sense of irony.

Dressed in modern clothes, Richard and his court (including his wife, played by Julia C. Chan ’05, and various hangers-on played by Emily A. Cregg ’09, Susan C. Merenda ’07, and Zachary B.S. Sniderman ’09) were portrayed as spoiled rich kids, accustomed to experiencing life as one long party and unwilling to let reality ruin their fun until it’s too late. Richard himself is given ample warning of the various dangers facing his rule but decides to go off to Ireland rather than confront them, returning only to be deposed.

This Richard was likely to brush off serious matters with a sneer and a wave of the hand, which painted the defection of the more serious members of his court (they wore suits and ties instead of t-shirts or fishnets), in the light of extreme annoyance rather than rebellion. As played by Polk, he was almost too childish to be taken seriously as a power to rebel against, with a boozy swagger and jovialness that implies a sense of invulnerability and which is gradually chipped away over the course of the play.

Instead of Richard, the character who defined the action was antagonist Bolingbroke. Played by Daniel R. Pecci ’09, who gave the character a pugnacious and intimidating air, Bolingbroke was seemingly ready to get into a fight at any moment. Banished and disinherited within the first couple scenes of the play, he assembles an alliance of the many lords mistreated by Richard and invades England. Despite the title, the play is more about his rise than Richard’s fall.

After Richard died, the action shifted to depicting the consolidation of Bolingbroke’s power, but oddly enough, rather than letting the humor die with the most humorous character, Zalisk amped up the farce. There was a scene of an assassination attempt played as a sitcom, complete with broad mugging, slapstick, and a laugh track (provided by three actors behind a curtain). This scene was amusing and unsettling in its incongruity, but it was also confusing, marking a radical shift from the characterizations that had been set up to that point.

The modernization was not confined to the characterizations and dress. In a cinematic touch, slides with credits and captions (such as “He receives a ghostly apparition”) were projected onto a curtain behind the action. The set itself, designed by Lizzie B. Rose ’08, was comprised of wooden blocks for thrones and high ground as well as miscellaneous trash and beer cans scattered about, providing an immediate sense of Richard’s court (when Bolingbroke takes over, he cleans up, complete with caption “Bolingbroke cleans up”).

“The Tragedy of King Richard the Second” is, at least in Zalisk’s incarnation, not tragic at all, but rather a dark comedy played out on a large scale. If a serious Richard would be infuriating in his obliviousness to the problems that beset him, this Richard is amusingly so. While some of the choices were a bit strange, changing tragedy into comedy made the play a highly entertaining experience.



—Reviewer Elisabeth J. Bloomberg can be reached at bloomber@fas.harvard.edu.