The Tragedy of Richard III
Lyric Theatre, Belfast
★★★☆☆
When it comes to Richard III, a notorious royal surrounded by rumours of murder and conspiracy in 15th-century England, even he seems to buy what people say about him. Mocked for living with a spinal condition, he introduces himself early in Shakespeare’s play as if believing the offensive language used against him: “Deformed, unfinished, sent before my time.”
Those words sound more complex in the Lyric Theatre’s production, as Richard, in a nicely judged performance by the disabled actor Zak Ford-Williams, delivers the line with a strangely eloquent, unquestioning acceptance. Seated in a wheelchair, he resembles a calm, sad picture of internalised ableism.
Directed by Oisín Kearney, and conceived during a period when his coadaptor, Michael Patrick, was diagnosed with motor neuron disease, this inventives staging presents Richard living with a terminal illness. Seeing him disabled exposes some of the play’s bile; when Richard propels forward to confront his sister-in-law, Queen Margaret, made vicious by Charlotte McCurry, and accuse her of interfering with kingly succession, her aggressive response flows like a reversion to ablest insults: “Thou elvish-marked, abortive, rooting hog”; “this poisonous bunch-backed toad”. The play has no shortage of low blows.
Ford-Williams (who alternates the role with Patrick) makes Richard seems undangerous, with a boylike gentleness and soft voice, as he secretly poisons the king and plots against his heirs (all while acquiring a gallery of impressive wheelchairs). It feels significant that his ally Tyrrell (played by Paula Clarke) is an assassin communicating via British Sign Language, who has hearing individuals gesturing foolishly to her. Only Richard seems to communicate tactfully with her: “Thou sing’st sweet music.”
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That suggests a survey separating disabled characters from those who wronged them. Richard even exploits the demeaning tactics used against him, claiming to be a “tardy cripple” in his failure to rescue a duke from execution, and exposing his leg to decision-makers in an act of self-objectification to gain their sympathy.
The overall effect is more editorial than stirring, though, with the seriousness of some crimes and alliances fluffed by over-reached gags. Even in the heat of battle, Kearney prefers a stylised wasteland to a bloody field, representing a death toll by filling an industrial bin with mannequins. In a play where we regularly hear “Off with his head!” there’s surprisingly little gore.
Kearney and Patrick’s adaptation does feel like progress, however. As archaeological evidence concluded, a decade or so ago, that Richard III lived with scoliosis, the play’s production history can read as a crude mythology of ableism, of performers manipulating disabled iconography with an aim to startle: the spiderlike manipulation of crutches; the horrific performances of neurological conditions.
Kearney and Patrick’s final touch is to shunt us into the real world of the theatre industry, with a disabled actor reciting from elsewhere in Shakespeare’s canon, including Sonnet 16. That’s where the writer sounds urgent, encouraging a young man to start a family before it’s too late, but spoken by someone terminally ill it sounds as if there is everything to lose: “Make war upon this bloody tyrant Time.”
Runs at the Lyric, as part of Belfast International Arts Festival 2024, until Sunday, November 10th
