Production Language English
Country of Origin England, United Kingdom
Description Britian's National Theatre retunrs to New York for the first time since 1981. Ian McKellen featured in Royal National Theatre's acclaimed production of Richard III.
Richard III has always been one of Shakespeare's most popular plays. Audiences through the ages have been attracted by the spectacle of a Saturday-night melodrama in which a satanic joker hacks his way to the throne. One of the fascinating aspects of the Royal National Theatre production, directed by Richard Eyere and starring Sir Ian McKellen, is that it overturns tradition. It is an unequivocally political reading of the play that sets the action in the England of the 1930s rather than the 1480s, and that makes Richard himself a grimly purposeful killer rather than a satanically charming ironist. When it opened at Britian's National Theatre in July 1990, it was furiously controversial. Literal-minded diehards were sceptical. Modernists were enthusiastic. But as the production progressed around European countries that had first-hand experience of Fascism, it was greeted with full-throated acclamation.
Identifier 1992s.00521
