Summary 
Outdoor history contrasts a diminutive and boyish King Richard with a towering and noble usurper Bolingbroke. Inept and childish, Richard makes a poignant realization once imprisoned, and the opportunistic politician Henry IV is revealed as a hypocrite. Strong, straight-forward drama.
Design
Directed by John Sipes. Set and costumes by Douglas Heap. Lights by J. William Ruyle. Sound by David Zerlin.
Cast
Danny Camiel (Bushy), Robert Carin (Green), Robin Atkin Downes (Mowbray/Scroop), Al Espinosa (Bolingbroke), Darrel Ford (York), Callum Keith-King (Richard II), Pamela Klarup (Duchess of Gloucester), David Kortemeier (Gaunt), Jodi Marcs (Queen Isabel), Philip Thompson (Northumberland), Pam Vogel (Duchess of York).
Analysis
On an evening of a performance of Richard II at the Illinois Shakespeare Festival, the conclusion of the Festival's Green Show is marked in ceremonious fashion: King Richard II himself, seated on a high-backed and high-armed throne of dark wood, is held aloft and carried slowly across the Ewing Manor lawn by his chair-bearers. Richard is lavishly attended by many servants and courtiers and basks in the attention he receives. Soon after, the King makes a similarly extravagant entrance, carried through the audience from the rear of the theatre. Physically slight, with boyish features, and dwarfed within the huge throne, Richard waves delightedly to the crowd, at times squirming like a child, leaning far over an arm of the throne to get a closer look at someone or something. Finally situated with much decorum at center stage, the King casually eats a piece of bread, exchanging sly glances and grins with his favorites in the court. Before speaking to John of Gaunt to open the play, Richard tosses the bread carelessly to the side of the stage with a disdainful smirk.
Callum Keith-King's performance as Richard is the heart of this involved production, in which the stage bustles with the activity of numerous soldiers, attendants, and torch-bearers. Keith-King portrays the thirtyish monarch as spoiled and self-centered; elaborately attired in royal blue and purple, he wears several ostentatious rings on each hand, and is baby-faced and smug in facial expression. Keith-King reveals his characterization of Richard through a variety of child-like mannerisms: joyful bursts of giggles and dark moments of pouting while bathing himself, with Bushy, Bagot, and Green lying about the court like caterpillars around him; infantile whining and self-pity when confronted by York with the hopelessness of his military situation; and fuming tantrums at the scarcity of loyalty among his nobles.
To be consistent with this representation of Richard, director John Sipes and Keith-King depict the troubled sovereign as not so much arbitrary in his decisions or incompetent in his administration, but as youthfully impulsive and emotionally pre-adolescent: Richard's seizure of Gaunt's wealth for the Ireland war is portrayed as something of a spontaneous whim, and his return from Ireland to quell the rebellion is shown as a homesick child's arrival home, with Richard wriggling on the ground like a gleeful toddler. During the early scene in which Bolingbroke and Mowbray ceremoniously equip themselves for their duel, the indecisive Richard fidgets in his throne, his eyes rapidly darting back and forth, and he frequently turns to look pleadingly to his uncles and advisors for assistance. Finally, when Richard throws down his warder to halt the duel-to-the-death, he does so more in a frustrated snit than in an executive decision or a magnanimous royal gesture. The once-censored deposition scene also emphasizes rashness of behavior rather than the textual Richard's more melancholic reflection on the Divine Right of Kings. Keith-King provokes scattered laughs from the audience as he furiously strips away his royal attire and flings the garments around the stage. He leaps protectively onto the throne as if to save it from the rebels, embracing it absurdly, and his high-pitched, anguished "ay, no; no, ay" in surrendering the crown itself to Bolingbroke is more like a recalcitrant child relinquishing a favorite toy than an ousted monarch surrendering a sacred right.
Only after the deposing, and following the heartfelt scene with Queen Isabel on Richard's way to the Tower, do Sipes and Keith-King reveal the humanity of Richard by accentuating poignant, personal poetry. When Richard is imprisoned, Sipes lights him starkly, following his every movement with four spotlights hand-held by crouching actors dispersed across the perimeter of the stage. Richard's multiple shadows loom ominously against the prison-door backdrop in the most visually striking image of the production. This staging enhances Keith-King's suddenly soft-spoken and introspective Richard and makes the deposed King's self-realization more emphatic. Only one other moment from this production rivals this scene for dramatic potency. Earlier, the Earl of Salisbury comments darkly on Richard's approaching fall - "I see thy glory, like a shooting star" - and exits hurriedly. The line is repeated in turn by one ethereal voice after another, and, with the lights down and the stage dark, the almost chanting voices echo each other chillingly, as Richard's fate is irrevocably sealed.
Sipes focuses on Keith-King's characterization of the pampered King. As both director and actor revealed in the play's opening night, post-performance discussion, the text's concluding fight scene, in which Richard, the lion dying, rises and kills two murderers before being slain by Exton, was cut as "inconsistent" with their intended portrayal of Richard. Richard's non-resistance of the murderers in this production is not incongruous with the callow ineptitude of the established character. The editing of other scenes diminishes the play's prominent textual themes of loyalty and the divine nature of Kings. The most glaring omission is the Aumerle/York sequence with its complicated questions of allegiance to crown and family. The deletion of these scenes, as well as all references to Bolingbroke's wayward son, the prig prince Hal, lessens the complexity of loyalty and father/son relationship issues and eliminates the scarce moments of humor in the play. However, the editing effectively streamlines the production, which focuses almost entirely on Richard and his contrast to the rebel Bolingbroke.
Bolingbroke is a tall, broad-shouldered soldier, clad almost entirely in angry red, with long black hair bound in a tight pony tail. He is the physical opposite of Richard - the comparatively slight, wan king attired in soft blue and purple and sporting short blond hair - as well as an emotional contrast: the stoic Bolingbroke is confident and noble, and displays little change of expression, while Richard fluctuates wildly from child-like glee to whimpering frustration to overblown temper tantrum. The nobility of the coldly militaristic Bolingbroke is subtly undercut in the final scene, however, in which Northumberland, Fitzwater, and Percy each approach the new King with a large sack of graphically bloody heads of executed traitors. From the gallery, Bolingbroke graciously thanks his nobles but then appears appalled when Exton brings Richard's coffin to him, revealing the character's hypocrisy. The production concludes on a jarringly hollow note, with the bloody new King's sanctimonious promise of a holy war to assuage his guilt-ridden conscience. With this final moment, Sipes delineates the disturbing similarities between the calculating Bolingbroke's sanguinary hypocrisy and the puerile Richard's short-sighted self-service, both of which result in bloodshed and political unrest. The disastrous consequences of Bolingbroke's usurpation are merely hinted at in this play, but despite public and court favor of Bolingbroke, in this Richard II, neither King is revealed as decisively better or more right than the other, only vastly different in character and conduct.
Note: A version of this article was edited and published in Shakespeare Bulletin, Vol.12, No.2, Spring 1994.