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The Almeida production of Shakespeare's Richard III is their first direct live digital broadcast .... I'm sure it wont be their last live, or encore, dip into this new brave world.
What a production, what a performance and what an evening of truly inspiring theatre this was ... thank goodness that those of us unable to get to London (or get tickets, or afford tickets) were able to see this brilliant Richard III. Well, some of us, I was a bit shocked at how few seats were taken in our local cinema, we booked early to make sure of a place but sadly there was a vast swath of empty seats.
Ralph Fiennes' Richard is an incredibly powerful performance; compelling, cutting, funny and frightening all in one. He commands the stage and his manipulation of characters and situation comes over as completely credible - there is a truth to his conversation with us, the audience and judges of his character. Finbar Lynch as Buckingham gives a beautifully still and calm rendition of the "fixer" and Susan Engel's Duchess of York was genuinely moving and masterful. This is not an ensemble piece, it never really could be given the nature of the play, but the whole cast carry themselves off with great commitment and skill; from the youngest to Vanessa Redgrave whose madness is palpable as the broken Queen Margaret. I shall remember this for a long time thanks to Rupert Goold's direction which yields a tight, well paced 3 hours that flew by. The top and tail of the show, set in that now famous Leicester car park, worked well for me and provided a frame to the show but jarred a little, from a time and era perspective, with the mix of mobile phones, guns and modern dress (+armour) which by themselves, within the play, actually worked incredibly well. In particular, the mobile phones were not shoe-horned in but became integral to the interactions and plot in a way that seemed completely natural.
Reviewing the broadcast production is a slightly different thing. The microphones were a bit of a problem, very occasionally dropping out or picking up the scratching of rubbed dolls and clothing. There was also a tendancy for the sound to be delivered at an even level with no real sense of placement, depth or direction (in part because of the camera techniques used - see below). The real sound distraction for us was, as always, that the old Odeon in Weston-super-Mare was converted into a multi-screen without adequate soundproofing which really grated on the nerves - one day I will see the film that is the loudest on the night, though morelikely I shall switch to our new cinema (under construction) or to one of the smaller single-screen independents.
Having seen several broadcast productions I would say the real problem with this particular one was that the cameras did not allow us to take in the production as a staged show. We were "treated" to far too many cropped views and close-ups, which are not what theatre is about. Indeed, we barely got to see any of the production in the context of the overall stage design (Hildegard Bechtler), nor indeed much of the action in the context of all those on stage. As to watching the off-line reations of characters and the choreography of movement - forget it. Stage and "screen" acting are not the same, nor are the paradigms and conventions - to show theatre out of context like this risks it losing its relevance. That is a shame.
An amazing piece of theatre, if not of "cinema" ....
