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COPYRIGHT 2004 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.
Call me old-fashioned, but on the opening page of my copy of Shakespeare's "Richard III" I don't see any stage direction that reads "Enter King and Court to portentous swelling music and vulgar pantomime." The director Peter DuBois's first gesture in his new production (at the Public) is to smudge the canvas. Instead of beginning the play as Shakespeare intended, with the deformed Richard, Duke of Gloucester, exposing his diabolical wound and wit to the audience from an empty stage, DuBois externalizes what should be a startling and seductive moment of confession. Here Richard enters and approaches King Edward IV's throne with his back to the audience; his famous first words, which are meant to open his manipulative case for murder--"Now is the winter of our discontent / Made glorious summer by this son of York"--are voiced over the dumb show. At a stroke, Richard's turmoil and vainglory are generalized, his crucial relationship to the audience skewed, and the production misses its chance to capitalize on the fact that Richard sees himself as a master performer. ("I can add colors to the chameleon, / Change shapes with Proteus for advantages, / And set the murderous Machiavel to school," he boasts in "Henry VI, Part III.") When Richard does finally take us directly into his confidence in DuBois's version, the emphasis of his first words lies on his external deformity, not on...
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