Customer Reviews

The Plays of William Shakespeare - King Richard II

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This made-for-television (or possibly video, I'm not sure) production starts off, if you're watching it on DVD, with several knocks against it, as the blurb on the box claims, with rather dubious accuracy, not only that the production is staged as seen in the sixteenth century (not true, it's indoors and there are women in it), but that unlike most filmed Shakespeare it does not feature "unfamiliar English accents." Despite these harbingers of doom I tried to give it a fair shake, and indeed occasionally director William Woodman makes some clever choices, but this is a dull and uninspired effort. In the title role, David Birney gives perhaps the most uncharismatic performance since David Gwillim donned the royal arms and whined at his soldiers to storm a cheap plywood Harfleur in the BBC Henry V; he plows through his speeches rather flatly and spends the whole production with either an arrogant smirk or what I think is supposed to be an anguished smirk. Paul Shenar fares slightly, but not a whole lot, better as a brooding but excessively pasty and sweaty Bolingbroke; the supporting cast ranges from unmemorable to wretched (and frequently causes utterance of the phrase "hey, what have I seen that guy in?"). Don't bother unless you're madly obsessive about Richard II like I am. In fact, if you're madly obsessive about Richard II, you *especially* ought not to watch this production.

This is probably the worst possible production of Richard II, a great play. Couldn't finish watching it. Glad I only rented the DVD.