Richard the III, Sunday February 5th 3pm

I saw Richard the III this past Sunday, and was not very impressed. The epic 3 1/2 hour performance caught me off gaurd with its unruly visciousnessness and length. Perhaps if the set design did not drone me out with its horrificly bland symetrical arragements of small furniture in oversided rooms with endless doors, perhaps I would have watched more closely. The actors were in fact tallented, although the accents would make one think they appeared from a range of locations throught the english speaking colonies. I was not conviced. Kevin space's physicality was convincing, most of all, and perhaps justified his horrific acts with the pain he was perhaps experiencing internally. I attended this show with family, as part of Bam's Fall/Winter season which I will see 5 all together. Between my grandmothers occasional snoring, and the siloute of my dads head dropping between acts, I decided to join for one short moment. Listening with closed eyes is a great experience. It lets me know that the text is working, but there is a disconnect with the visual arrangement on stage. The harvey theater is a medium sized theater, and in its 2nd teir orchestra i felt distant due to the long hallway on stage. The visual projections of clouds and text announcing scene changes felt like broadway tricks and did not enhance the story at all. I felt like these are things that would land me a bad grade in an undergraduate course, but I somehow cast a brillant array of characters.

Lastly, I thought it was intereting the director chose to cast two women as the twin boys, as the presence of women in drag was appropriate of course in context of the time, but with men dressing as women. Perhaps this was a political statement I can read into our current age in theater. My brain was interested mostly in this small detail.