Stage: Naked villany

Richard III
by William Shakespeare
director Nicolás Pérez Costa
with Nicolás Pérez Costa, Marta Carvalho, Tricia Hitchcock, Juliet Prew, Hugo Coello, Mathew Miles, Julia Rose Lisa, Tom Longmire, Oliver Broad, Nabhan Uddin, Germán Martins
The Cockpit Theatre, London • 8-11.Jul.26 ★★★

Shakespeare's most florid villain gets a highly amped-up staging in this adaptation by Madrid-based Argentine actor-director Nicolás Pérez Costa. Performed in the round, the production emphasises physicality, using striking choreography and on-stage percussion to drive the action. And it also cleverly deploys sound and light to create a visceral experience for the audience. So perhaps we can forgive the rather overworked tatty New Romantic costumes (black lace by the mile) and literally on-the-nose cracked China-doll makeup.

Using the original text, which has been carefully trimmed, Pérez Costa presents Richard as a twisted, twitching monster who has somehow made himself look like a hero to the court. Walking with crutches, he regales the audience with his tormented ideas, devious plans and murderous thoughts, conniving to steal the throne after the death of his brother Edward IV (Mathew Miles). Oozing paranoia, he seduces Edward's widow Anne (Julia Rose Lisa) and kills her sons. Always with someone else to blame, he delights in doing away with anyone who even hints that they might go against his ambition.

Watching this brutal plan unfold is properly intense, played to the hilt by a gifted ensemble of players. Even when they're not in the spotlight, they lurk around the stage space, which features several steel drums that offer both height and noise. Light, sound and musical effects add motion and violence in several key sequences, such as a billowing sheet encompassing Richard's feverish nightmare in which he confronts his victims. And the climactic war sequence is superbly staged, from Richard's triumphant arrival on horseback to his final moments on the battlefield.

Throughout the story, Pérez Costa growls and snarls his dialog with menacing relish, magnetically commanding the attention. And the up-for-it cast around him equally commit their whole bodies to this extremely physical production. It's loud and abrasive, as this narrative should be. And the story has a fiendish power that pulls us in even as we are repulsed by the violent machinations of this unapologetically power-hungry man. And of course, they thankfully don't need to highlight the parallels with present-day politics.

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photos courtesy of the production • 9.Jul.26