Gregory Doran, now in command at Stratford in succession to Sir Michael Boyd, launches his regime with Richard II, intending to stage the complete Shakespearean canon over the next six years, ‘making every play an event’. What’s really good is that the plays will also be seen on tour, in London, online and ‘live on screen in cinemas and classrooms nationwide’. It’s taken too long for the publically funded RSC to put live ‘streaming’ in place; Richard II, broadcast on 13 November, will be the first play so honoured.
With David Tennant in the title role this may already be a sell-out, but encore screenings are already planned in many cinemas. As Tennant has recently been a memorable RSC Hamlet, casting him as the introspective, poetical king was an obvious follow-up. The German director Claus Peymann is not alone in seeing Richard as ‘a Hamlet come to power’. This may be a little too glib, but it’s an idea worth chewing on.
Like it or not, you have to accept that a star like Tennant is going to dominate. This pulls two ways because, while it’s magic at the box office, it’s not overfriendly towards the ensemble principle Doran has inherited from Boyd. Nevertheless, you can’t do Richard II without someone pretty charismatic in the title role and Tennant undoubtedly measures up. His arrival on the Stratford stage is a rumbustious, disconcertingly breezy shock after Ben Whishaw’s outstanding performance in last year’s BBC Hollow Crown Histories. With the advantage of being so often close to camera, Whishaw inhabited this most inward, self-communing role of all the History plays, holding you spellbound with its poetry.
Tennant, needing to command the live Stratford audience, chooses a very different approach.
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