Playwright: William Shakespeare
(adapted by Mark Vadik)
At: Theo Ubique at Bailiwick Repertory, 1229 W. Belmont
Phone: (773) 883-1090; $25-$30
Runs through: April 4
To begin with, R3, director/writer's Mark Vadik's (co-directing with Jason Palmer) riff on Shakespeare's Richard III, looks great. Working with an obviously inspired creative team (Laura S. Brignull, set; Amanda Giangiulo, costumes; Jared Moore, lighting; and Mark Vadik and Acumen Nation, sound and music), Vadik has crafted a kind-of goth hell for his characters to cavort in. There's graffiti-sprayed corrugated metal, huge swaths of wrinkled black cloth, scrims behind which simulated sex acts are performed, and gray cubes of furniture. The lighting struts and frets from orange to blue to green, and finally to dim and red, when evil and grim deeds are perpetrated. There's a wicked dry ice machine lending a horror movie feel to the proceedings. The costumes are vinyl, denim, and leather, accented by chains and tattoos, mostly in various shade of darkest black or blood red. And the music is edgy and industrial. There's a unified creative vision here. Visually and aurally, R3 is a pretty stunning show.
Vadik wanted to create a psychic universe with this post-punk Shakespearian backdrop, attempting at the same time to make the work more accessible to modern audiences while bringing new light and meaning to one of Shakespeare's most morally bankrupt characters (the story concerns itself with Richard's rise to power and the bodies he leaves behind in his murderous wake). Vadik goes a step further than simply setting the story down in a goth, industrial setting, he also accelerates the mental thesis behind the production by splitting Richard's psyche into two Jungian-inspired forces, the feminine anima and the masculine animus. Vadik has divvied up Richard's dialogue between the character himself and these two forces. While this is a unique way of portraying a classic character, it doesn't always succeed because the actors portraying the Jungian elements (a dominatrix-inspired Helen Manasses and a forlorn-looking J. Scott) aren't really reflective of the character in the ways they behave and because each of the actors apparently isn't aware of modulation. They come across as too brassy, too campy, or simply too loud to be effective. One wonders if this conceit would have been better left out because it's gimmicky and doesn't really add a lot. Simpler would have been better, with Richard III being portrayed as a conflicted soul, hungry for power and glory, yet wounded at the same time.
This is an ambitious attempt and, for the goth crowd, a way to make Shakespeare more readily within their grasp. For the visual and aural spectacle, R3 rocks. For a work of Shakespeare with emphasis on traits of human greed and hunger for power, the themes get lost in the artiness of the production. Less really is often more.