Richard III
The production, while not
drawing our largest audiences ever, was by all accounts
a great success. While we learned that it was a hard
sell to get great numbers of people to attend the
history plays, we also learned that we could, in fact,
take on the challenge and accomplish it well.
From the Playbill – Director’s
Notes:
“The chance to collaborate with my old friend Jarion
in this wonderful setting lured me into [Richard’s]
lair again. I happily surrender to the web of Shakespeare’s
nastiest, most challenging bad guy tale.
We examined closely the possibility
of resurrecting Colley Cibber’s 1700 popularization
of the play and decided that although this overlooked
dramaturge had solved many of the problems of too
much history and too little action in parts of the
play, the language was not up to Shakespeare and the
secondary characters had all been reduced to helpless
victims of the great psychopathic monster.
As I see it, Richard III
is a hard, blackly comic look at the patterns of the
abuse of power, and it extends to the entire world
Shakespeare depicted in the late fifteenth century.”
What the Critics Said:
“The performances in Marin’s Richard III
are its real strength, and they make the production
worth a look. Jarion Monroe is a confident, grand-scale
Richard, alternating mainly between coarse savagery
and private sarcasm. There’s an extraordinary moment
in the middle of the play, when Richard’s young nephews
are mocking him, and one of the children jumps up
on his hump. Richard looks helpless, and we’re suddenly
cast back to the unimaginable torment of this misfit’s
childhood….Kimberly King gives a performance of extraordinary
clarity, energy and velocity….electrifying every scene
she’s in….the brutish nature of 15th century politics
is felt in all its suffocating horror.” Mick LaSalle,
San Francisco Chronicle
“The Marin Shakespeare Festival has reached a couple
of important milestones in its quest to become one of
the major players in the Bay Area bardic sweepstakes.
It’s survived, for one thing, long enough to make it
into its sixth season at Forest Meadows on the woodsy
Dominican College campus.
It’s doubled in size….veteran Shakespearean
Jarion Monroe is an apt choice for the title role….Grantham
and Monroe have come up with enough creative twists
to keep the title character fresh and generally engrossing.
Monroe is a bright, self-mocking
villain, winning us over – even as he horrifies us
– not only with his conspiratorial asides but with
the way he concocts his schemes on the fly.”
Robert Hurwitt, San Francisco Examiner
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