Berkeley's Sweeping "Richard II"
San Jose Mercury News
E'en more than usual, the opening of the 1987 Berkeley Shakespeare Festival
illustrates the problems of a company with heart and ambition but a profound
lack of wherewithal.
Under its new artistic director, Michael Addison, the company has set itself an
immense project: the first Henriad or Lancastrian Cycle of history plays,
comprising "Richard II," the two parts of "Henry IV" and "Henry V."
Three of these will play in repertory this summer at John Hinkel Park in North
Berkeley, the company's usual home. The less-often-performed "Henry IV, Part
2" joins the others in a miniseason next fall at the downtown Julia Morgan
Theater.
In addition to the sheer scale of the undertaking, the company is committed
to doing it properly. Actors whose roles continue from play to play keep their
parts throughout, so one can see how certain leading characters negotiate
the course of history, sometimes being molded by it and sometimes bending it
to their ends.
Thus Tom Ramirez, who plays the usurper Henry Bolingbroke in "Richard II,"
will become the careworn king who struggles to hold onto a racked realm in
"Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2." And James Carpenter plays his scapegrace son,
Prince Hal, who transcends his roistering past to become Henry V, England's
greatest military hero until Nelson.
But the first play of the cycle, "Richard II," which opened over the weekend,
shows a very mixed company of actors: some to watch for and some to watch
out for.
As with Palo Alto's TheatreWorks, which struggles with the same problem, the
gap between the Equity (professional) actors and the amateurs -- a word I use
deliberately, though everyone in the company is paid -- is as wide as a
tournament field.
Guest director Kathleen Conlin, recently named head of the theater
department at Ohio University, has staged "Richard II" with a decisive hand --
most of the way. Without depending on color schemes or heraldic symbols,
she keeps the complicated politics clear, vivid and relevant.
There are no black or white characters, no heroes or villains: A spendthrift
king can bid a moving farewell to his wife as he is exiled; a wronged baron can
use a perfectly just claim to an inheritance as a cloak for kingly ambitions. This
is a world in which the players preach Christian virtues and practice Dark Ages
cruelty without a thought for their incongruous residue. Bolingbroke's
calculation, Richard's willfulness, Hotspur's mercurial temper and York's
befuddlement are apparent from the start.
Just before the end, however, Conlin's good sense seems to desert her. She
begins to insert expressionistic tableaux, in which (for instance) the queen's
women assume weeping-and- wailing poses, backdrops to her grief. In the last
scene, the people of England, not hitherto present, come clomping across the
stage in a black-clad chorus line. What on earth for?
And why such drastic cuts in the crucial gardeners' scene (a metaphor for the
wounded land of England) and the gauntlet scene (a satire on the convoluted
politics of Henry IV's court)?
So with the acting. At the top is the electric enmity of the cousins, Richard
and Bolingbroke. (In a delightful accident of casting, nearly all the ruling
Plantagenet family have similar noses.) Julian Lopez-Morillas and Ramirez,
colleagues for many years, play off each other's timing and energy with the
accuracy of long friendship. Lopez-Morillas is an unfocused but continually
arresting Richard -- a reflection of the king's manifold flaws and facets.
Carpenter (disguised with a bushy beard) is a stalwart Mowbray, loyally
accepting betrayal by his king. Ann Houle as the Duchess of Gloucester and
Lura Dolas as the Duchess of York make whole women out of small parts. (The
Duchess of York's ear trumpet almost steals the show.) Bill terKuile misses
Northumberland's opportunism but catches his decisive, pragmatic courage;
Peter Kjenaas promises a Hotspur of rare depth in the subsequent plays.
In an interesting directorial decision, Bolingbroke's cousin Aumerle (Douglas
Sills) is made to be about 17, which explains his vacillating participation in so
many dubious enterprises.
On the other hand, there are the high school performances of Chris Ayles as
York and Carol Davis as the Queen: one dimension apiece, and the wrong one
at that. Ayles plays York as a stand- up comic; Davis is woefully melodramatic.
John Sefton, a presentable John of Gaunt last summer for Shakespeare/Santa
Cruz, has slowed the dying man to a crawl. Perhaps his "scepter'd isle" speech,
which lasts about as long as the Roman occupation, is the reason the
gardeners' scene had to be cut. In his alternate role of the Welsh guerrilla
Owen Glendower, he speaks English as though he had burned his mouth on a
hot Welsh rarebit.
Everyone wears black sweat suits, over which Douglas Russell puts layers of
gorgeous robes, tunics and armor. As the interlocked productions are also to
maintain unity of design, the sweat suits will remain, acquiring increasingly
contemporary outer layers.
Warren Travis' open, Erector Set design of wood and metal mixes eras without
belaboring the point.
The incidental music is by Linda LaFlamme, the festival's composer in
residence for five seasons. It's hard to decide whether her score (for trumpet,
percussion and several bad singers) is more tone-deaf than tedious or the
other way around.
-Judith Green, San Jose Mercury News
July 7, 1987
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