Richard II

 The Pearl Theater Company’s Richard II at the New York City Center Stage has one thing to recommend it: Sean McNall as Richard II.  Fortunately, he’s the lead and he gets a lot of stage time.  Every line he delivers is powerful, clear and stately and wild at once; his bearing is never overdone, his expressions regal and tearful and amused.  Brilliant work.

Unfortunately, with a play that runs nearly three hours long, Richard II can’t be on stage the entire time, even if it is named for him.  And yes, this is a straight-forward rendition of the play, one which neither skips a line nor feels any need to add much in terms of direction.  The acting was solid throughout, but the blocking was hokey, the set a Hallmark vision of “desolate,” the wardrobes atrocious—aviator jackets and black jeans over the most proppity-prop-prop props on the Middle Ages, I swear the crown was cardboard painted gold. 

Richard II on the left, Bolingbroke on the right, and that's Harry Percy sportin' the aviator look in the background.  Harry's skirt looks like wallpaper, by the way, and that crown looks like an unimaginative ten year old made it.  Image courtesy of the New York Times review, here.

Probably the worst offense was a soundtrack of cheesy ass New Age renaissance music that would play between scenes, rife with the murmuring of the commoners if the scene called for such a thing (murmermurmermur), and played as background music to lend a sense of bathos to Richard’s brilliantly rendered pathos.