Hull Truck Theatre – until 27 May 2017. Viaduct Theatre, Halifax 30 May to 3 June. Reviewed by Marcus Richardson
In the 2017 City of Culture the famous Shakespeare play Richard III is being performed at Hull Truck theatre. The play follows the life of Richard III a villain who works his way up into power using betrayal and lies. Now we all know the story and where he ends up, and if you don’t, history is a fun thing to learn. We are given this deformed figure who is described as the devil and is constantly mocked for his appearance, shouldn’t we feel sorry for this man? Not with the acts he commits, killing boys and his brother.
The original story has him with a hunchback, but our actor Mat Fraser, has underdeveloped arms from thalidomide, lending to this attribute he owns the role bringing a comical aspect that a lot of the times you wouldn’t normally see in the play. We see him commit these horrific acts yet I couldn’t find myself hating him with a passion, even until the end he still had a joke or two, he took on the role with such passion and made it his own. Through out the play there is comedy which I really liked as most of his historical play are political and can become a drag, however with the added element of comedy I found that I wasn’t bored at any point in the play. The whole cast was absolutely amazing with various actors taking different roles and reacting to tragic events, which believe me they did very well, mostly on the female part with Ruth Alexander-Rubin being the poor Elizabeth who has bad news every scene pretty much.
The stage and audience was very much like the classic amphitheatre seat and you felt very close to the stage and action, I loved how close we were as none of the actors had microphones and relied on the power of their voices. The stage was incredibly large and the actors made great use of this aspect. If I could sum up the play without talking about the actors I would say drums, this is a play of many drums, and this was absolutely chilling and blows you away. In the final scene where Richard III goes to war and the stage opens up to its full potential and we are given this drumming band that controls the whole tempo and feel of the scene.
If you love Shakespeare and even if you’ve seen this play before, I would urge you to see this play and experience the power of the drums, the corruption of Richard and the tragedy of every character. If you’re scared that you don’t understand the classical text, don’t worry the actors do an amazing job of making sure you know what is happening, and the language isn’t an issue whatsoever. The show will be at Hull Truck theatre until 27th May, I would say go and see this show and even spend a day in the City of Culture, where arts is booming and spirits are high.