Richard III Chicago Shakespeare Theater 2024

  Richard III by William Shakespeare

(William Shakespeare's Hellraiser, photo credit: Liz Lauren)

  Ah Richard Plantagenet, Duke of Gloucester, King by his own bloody hand…Whether he deserves it or not, (and a lot of historians say he doesn’t but who asked them?) he has become one of Anglo American culture’s most wicked, and most gleeful villains.

  It’s a personal favorite of mine in Shakespeare’s canon, a play about a bad guy doing bad things and getting his comeuppance. Sure maybe Richard III is a profound meditation on the nature of power and evil and malicious ambition, on the other hand maybe that’s actually Macbeth and Richard III is just pure fun.

What better play to launch the regime of the great Chicago Shakespeare Theater’s new Artistic Director, Edward Hall, taking over from the great Barbara Gaines by giving us a show with innovative, appropriate and absolutely magical staging and pacing.

  All of this is secondary to the Richard at the center of course who in this case is actress Katy Sullivan. Like the hunchbacked Duke, Sullivan is disabled, without legs and gets around on various sets of prosthetics, when she goes into combat, those prosthetics are replaced by a pair of scythes which makes her seem infinitely badass.

  Sullivan doesn’t chew every word with relish, as many Richards do, but she lets the words propel her along a wave of victories and defeats.

  Libya V. Pugh gives a standout supporting performance as the banished Queen Margaret, whose family has been all but destroyed by Richard’s murderous ambitions.

  Returning to Hall’s ambitious staging, the show appears mostly set in the 1920s. (By law all Shakespeare productions must have a period setting that is NOT the setting it was written about) This provides for some amusing moments such as Richard dispatching assassins who look as prepared to reenact “Who’s On First” as they do to murder their target. The infamously ill fated “Princes in the tower” are hilariously portrayed by puppets.

  The show also brings a sort of slasher horror vibe to the various acts of violence which are show with unfliching brutality, a creepy chorus wearing bandages over their faces, dispatching unfortunate victims with chainsaws. At times the show feels like William Shakespeare’s Hellraiser which can only be a good thing.

  As I said, Shakespeare’s play, for all else it may be, is pure fun, and with this production it is in the right hands, a director, a cast and crew who understand its humor, and its horror.