gbgentz@unm.edu
Melodrama is more commonly funny than dramatic. It brings to mind hero-wielding butt-chins of power saving virginal maidens from crooning villains’ operatic mustaches. When it’s serious and not at all funny, it involves death, sex and lots of yelling.
But it’s impossible to not be just a little funny.
Richard III is not exactly the subtlest of Shakespeare’s plays to begin with, and the direction by Peter Kierst in the Vortex’s production pushes the envelope that much more.
The role of Richard is a long sought-after and much-parodied role by actors and the theatrical tradition. Much like Hamlet, it can be a defining role for an actor’s career. Richard’s physical deformity, often coming in the form of a hunchback, is ripe for the manner of hamming that Shakespearean actors get so unfortunately known for.
Richard is a crippled yet highborn noble who manipulates the politics of his royal court to be the last brother standing and become king. This comes mostly in the form of murdering lots and lots of people, including — but not limited to — a baby, who Richard snuffs personally.
Richard’s destruction of his country for the sake of an aggressive power grab has been reset in the violence of Bosnia in the early ‘90s — events just recent enough to still sting and with plenty of visual similarities to Ralph Fiennes’ recent film adaptation of Coriolanus — though the play adds some excellent tech gimmicks.
Obviously, the bodies are piling up for Richard, which is where the major deviations from the original script occur.
Just before Richard’s ultimate and rather inevitable crash and burn, the ghosts of his victims pay him a visit. The scene sticks out and raises questions that perhaps it shouldn’t: why does Richard suddenly seem to care about the human objects of his naked brutality and unrelenting cruelty?
A simple answer might just be that ghosts are cool. Shakespeare used the suddenly-on-the-eve-of-battle-ghosts-appear device more than once. But now the ghosts are everywhere. Any time that Richard might be thinking about ghosts, there are ghosts. One already macabre character who is not actually a ghost is retroactively made a ghost, but this choice is an excellent one.
This is thanks to Augusta Allen-Jones playing her wickedly nasty undead bruja as one for the ages. For a play about power plays, out of the entire cast it is Allen-Jones who truly exudes power.
The Vortex should go the whole hog and make the entire cast ghosts and rename the play “The Ghost of Queen Margaret of Lancaster III.”
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It’s too much. The attempt is made to connect to Richard’s ghosts in a more human and meaningful way. But really, the result is a continued flogging of a ghost horse after its actual beating was enough already.
In the combat of melodrama, there is a fine line between a performance that is powerful and one that is ridiculous. In Shakespeare, this is doubly dangerous. His plays have a reputation for being pretentious and inaccessible, and the delivery of Shakespeare’s language is very important, so that words are articulate wit and not limp poetry. However, with the play’s many stiff deliveries, the occasional British accent or sassily swaggering solider, the play as a whole is showily dramatic, except for Peter Diseth.
To say that Diseth is natural is an understatement. He possesses a calm control of cadence and movement, and his tonal choices are refined in their sincerity.
Chad Brummet’s Richard is a performance that is both thunderously thespian — including some creepy molestation and kissing assaults — and calculatedly composed. The meaning and relatable emotion of Brummet’s speeches get lost in his taut tone, though Brummet’s considerable talent is obvious enough.
“Chop off his head, man,” Brummet said with the cadence of a surfer. This single line, which elicited giggles from the audience, spoke to the delivery of the whole production’s use of language: as memorized poems instead of living words.
“Richard III”
Directed by Peter Kierst
Part of “Will Power 3”
3rd Annual Vortex Summer
Shakespeare Festival
The Vortex Theatre
2004½ Central Ave. S.E.
Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30 p.m. Sundays at 2 p.m.
Runs through June 24
$10 student
For tickets and reservations
visit vortexabq.org/ or call
505-247-8600.
