Kevin Spacey camps his way through Shakespeare at BAM
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Spacey gets scattered chuckles at his goofing, which includes a Groucho Marx imitation. He stalks the stage like a coiled snake, but instead of the venomous cobra he ought to be, he often comes off as more Monty Python or the King of Fredonia. Other times, it felt like a Guy Ritchie gangster movie such as “Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels,” but not as trenchant and funny. And they inexplicably use grown women to play the young princes he will have murdered. Oy.
There is nothing I can say to hurt this “Richard III.” BAM is the last stop on its international tour that began in Greece in July, hit five continents, garnered high praise from most critics, and mostly sold out. It is lamentably the last production in the mostly terrific three-year Bridge Project collaboration between the UK and the US –– London’s Old Vic where Spacey is artistic director, Mendes’ Neal Street Productions, and BAM, Brooklyn’s crown jewel. Perhaps my expectations were too high.
Mendes, who worked miracles as artistic director of the dynamic Donmar Warehouse in London, made his debut as a movie director with “American Beauty,” which won Oscars for Spacey and himself. And Spacey performed the Herculean task of saving the Old Vic theater in London by taking its reins in 2003 and delivering a string of hits. They are having fun here in Brooklyn, but have sacrificed much of the menace and majesty of the play.
Richard as Duke of Gloucester has killed off enough people to get the crown himself but wants a popular mandate. We see Spacey as the hunchbacked predator on a really big flat screen coyly cloistered with fake monks waiting to be coaxed into power. Here his mugging and camping for cheap laughs go into overdrive, as he deflects loud entreaties from audience plants to take the throne. I wanted to shout, “Oh, get over yourself and come out” at the famously closeted actor, but could not figure out how to say it in iambic pentameter.
Sad to say, this cast also does not come through –– on what is the essential of any Shakespeare production: the clear and cogent delivery of the poetry. I know these characters have an awful lot to be upset about (losing spouses and children, and sometimes both) but some of the performances — including Spacey’s — are pitched so high the screaming and snarling get in the way of what they are saying. Words are also lost to an intrusive score, mostly percussion. All this may be okay for an audience that knows every line of the play, but not for the rest of us.
In truth, it is only the first two hours before the intermission that are problematic. Hang on until after the break and this “Richard III” hurtles deftly to its conclusion — glorifying Richmond (a fine Nathan Darrow) and destroying Richard — with scenes both inventively and clearly staged. Especially good is the way the rivals’ sleep before their battle is interwoven, the virtuous Richmond untroubled while the ghosts of everyone Richard has killed essentially telling him to eat shit and die. No one is laughing at that point, least of all Richard.
George Weinberg, a noted psychotherapist who has written two books on Shakespeare, joined me at this production. He was glad he went, but said it was not “regal or rhythmic or poetic or highly dramatic” and that it “included scenes never done, scenes that added nothing.” George liked Buckingham (Chuck Iwuji), and I liked Queen Elizabeth (Haydn Gwynne), but unlike sex and pizza, Shakespeare isn’t pretty good even when it’s bad. This is one of those productions where a little less (drumming, projections introducing characters, camping) would have been more.
George and I may be in a minority. Most of the audience gave it a standing ovation, but it is a gesture promiscuously dispensed in our time –– much like Richard’s death sentences and Kevin’s irony.
RICHARD III
BAM’s Harvey Theater
651 Fulton St. at Ashland Pl.
Through Mar. 4
Tue.-Sat. at 7:30pm
Sat. at 2pm; Sun. at 3pm
$30-$100; bam.org
Or 718-636-4100
