The RSC's Richard II

Richard is King. A monarch ordained by God to lead his people. But he is also a man of very human weakness. A man whose vanity threatens to divide the great houses of England and drag his people into a dynastic civil war that will last 100 years.

I do love Shakespeare, there's some weird loyalty thing still lurking around from my A-Level days or maybe even earlier. I also feel I've worked hard to get to the stage where I can actually appreciate him. Years and years of not understanding a single thing and now when I understand a whole scene without Spark or York Notes to help me, I still feel shamefully gleeful and normally end up whispering to the person next to me 'I toootally just understood that' to which I normally receive a polite smile of the 'there, there' variety.

So last week I was, very luckily, invited to see Richard II at The Barbican. I'd never read or scene the play before, which normally means I end up doing a quick wiki search beforehand to check the rough plot. This time.. I forgot.

Thankfully, though, the RSC are really very good at putting on Shakespeare, who'd have thought it?? No X Factor props or mad dancers, just stripped back as it should be with a few clever set-pieces and lighting to transform the stage from scene to scene. As a result, it's really easy to follow the plot as the play in itself is quite simple.

David Tennant lived up to his great reputation in the title role. On the surface I thought the role was pretty simple, a King seemingly powerful but in reality a bit of a damp squib, but the different levels on which Richard has to connect with the audience is perhaps a little more extensive than I originally gave him credit. Act IV Scene I when Richard is summoned to personally abdicate the crown requires quite a dramatic contrast of humour, nostalgia, naivety, embarrassment, theatricality, sorrow and also fear, and Tennant completely nailed them all. He may not be quite as pretty as Jude Law and the play may not be as famous or as dramatic as Henry V, but David Tennant can sure act and has a considerably better head of hair in this as you can see. Luscious. (sorry Jude, I do still love you)

So in short, before I start rambling off on pretentious tangents, if you were thinking of going to see the RSC's Richard II, and can get yourself some tickets, definitely go. This is the first play in the RSC's new series of Shakespeare's Histories directed by Gregory Doran.