The Bridge Theater is within walking distance of the Tower of London, where in 1399 King Richard II was imprisoned and forced to abdicate England’s throne in favor of his cousin, who became Henry IV. Where better to stage a new production of William Shakespeare’s play about Richard’s downfall? From the playhouse foyer, theatergoers can look out at the tower across the River Thames, and the distance of those 600 years shrinks to nothing.
In this modern-dress take on “Richard II” directed by Nicholas Hytner and running through May 10, the hapless king is played by the English actor Jonathan Bailey, who is on a hot streak following recent high-profile screen roles — as Fiyero in “Wicked” and Anthony Bridgerton in “Bridgerton” — and is now taking on his biggest stage role to date.
Bailey gives an engrossing performance as Richard, whose corrupt misrule fuels popular support for the usurper cousin, Henry Bolingbroke (Royce Pierreson), despite the medieval doctrine that the monarch is anointed by God and therefore untouchable. After making a series of strategic blunders, Richard is decisively outmaneuvered by Bolingbroke’s rebel army and meets a swift, brutal demise.
Historical accounts remarked upon Richard’s effeminacy and in Bailey’s adroit rendering he is a capricious, flouncing sociopath whose every utterance is suffused with performative irony. He declares with mock solemnity that he has no choice but to raise taxes — and then gleefully helps himself to a line of cocaine. Moments after his uncle’s death, he hops onto the recently vacated hospital bed and blithely scoffs down grapes. When Richard finally agrees to hand over power, he proffers the crown and then retracts it — twice — like a petulant child refusing to part with a toy. All this badness is great fun to watch.
In contrast, Pierreson’s Bolingbroke has the abstracted air of a man impelled by forces greater than himself. With his hulking frame, balled-up fists and blunt vocal delivery, he is a striking counterpoint to the dissipatedly charming Richard. (After one of the king’s more florid speeches, a bewildered Bolingbroke impatiently asks one of his cronies to translate: “What says his majesty?”) Michael Simkins is the pick of the supporting cast as the Duke of York, who tries in vain to straddle the warring factions. His finger-wagging exasperation, verging at times on slapstick, gives an audience-friendly commentary on the unfolding intrigue.
While the performers are mostly in dapper business attire, Richard wears a frock coat with suede loafers. His crown, an unembellished gold headband, is relatively austere as crowns go, which paradoxically enhances its symbolic power. (Costumes are by Eleanor Dolan.) Bob Crowley’s set design is minimal but elegant. Scene changes on the traverse stage are seamlessly effected with the help of hydraulic platforms: Rectangular segments of stage sink into the bowels of the auditorium and then resurface, bringing forth actors and props.
And there is some deft lighting work by Bruno Poet, particularly in the penultimate scene, set in the Yorkshire castle where Richard sees out his second — and final — incarceration. The backlit bars of his prison cell cast long shadows that stop just short of Richard’s bed, where he soliloquizes under a spotlight and then is murdered by Henry’s henchmen.
It’s a shame, though, about the snatches of vaguely portentous music that punctuate some scenes. The score evokes an off-the-peg suspense that is unworthy of Shakespeare and more fitting to a TV show like “Succession.”
Anyone hoping for a comforting allegory of contemporary politics — a cautionary lesson about overreaching leaders getting their comeuppance — won’t find it here. Though Shakespeare’s play is unsparing in its portrayal of Richard’s failings, it is agnostic about the rights and wrongs of his overthrow. Indeed, Bolingbroke, with his straight-talking style and blustering promise “to weed and pluck away” the “caterpillars of the commonwealth,” has more in common with a populist demagogue than a democratic savior.
Henry’s accession to the throne sowed the seeds for the decades-long cycle of violence that would come to be known as the Wars of the Roses, bearing out the prophecy of the bishop of Carlisle — played here by a woman, Badria Timimi, and all the more Cassandra-like for it — that Richard’s deposition would bring “disorder, horror, fear and mutiny” in the long run. “The blood of England shall manure the ground,” she warns.
The more compelling drama here is not the political intrigue, but the tragic transfiguration of the deposed king. Richard’s campy loquaciousness had hitherto struck a somewhat desperate, insincere note, whether expatiating on the divine right of kings or reproaching the audience (his erstwhile subjects) for their fickleness and indifference to his downfall. But his flip complacency then gives way, via panic and despair, to a circumspect serenity as he is unburdened in defeat. This transition is tricky for actors to pull off — they must somehow become smaller and bigger at the same time — and Bailey executes it with admirable subtlety.
Conversely, the usurper is uneasy in triumph as the full significance of his actions becomes clear. When Richard finally places the crown on his cousin’s head, Henry immediately removes it and sits down to brood. His moment of glory is a somber anticlimax.
They say character is destiny, in politics as in life, but the suggestion here is that great offices of state exert their own degrading force on all those who presume to occupy them. Legitimacy is a slippery currency — unquantifiable and ever in flux. It is almost beside the point. Power itself is the problem: Humans are not built to handle it.
