Jonathan Bailey gives the best performance I’ve ever seen of Shakespeare’s flawed monarch, an erratic tyrant who gains dignity once deposed.
Yet when he challenges Richard – in this case, by training a massive field gun on the theatre’s balcony where Bailey stands spotlit in a white shift – he becomes a traitor.
The ruthless plotting and politicking – opponents here are dispatched with a bullet to the back of the neck - spark associations with Shakespeare’s other Tudor history plays: it’s boggling to remember he wrote them in seemingly random order over two decades.
Richard, meanwhile, is transformed through grief over the loss of his kingdom into a kind of Christ figure, a metamorphosis Bailey achieves with great skill.
Bailey inhabits and humanizes the king in a clean, clear, martial staging from Nicholas Hytner that feels right for our times.
