Summary 
Stately modernization with Richard presiding over a pistol duel between Bolingbroke and Mowbray then sipping champagne and dancing at his private disco. More a gritty modern political drama than a history play or a reflection upon the Divine Right of Kings, with a pink mini-dressed Queen and a Nixon look-alike Bolingbroke assuming power. Striking conclusion with a Gatsby-like Henry IV spattered with stage blood.
Design
Directed by Barbara Gaines. Set by James Noone. Costumes by Michael Krass. Lights by Kevin Adams. Compositions by Alaric Jans. Sound by Scott Myers.
Cast
Mike Nussbaum (Gaunt/Gardener), Caitlin Hart (Duchess of Gloucester), Scott Parkinson (Richard), Scott Jaeck (Bolingbroke), David Turrentine (Mowbray), Reginald Nelson (Aumerle), Felicia Fields (Singer/Duchess of York), Ian Christopher (Bushy), Steve Pickering (York), Cassandra Bissell (Queen), Fredric Stone (Northumberland), Donald Brearley (Carlisle).
Analysis
Barbara Gaines begins this stately production of Richard II with a wise reordering of scenes. Gaines shifts the 1.2 discussion between Gaunt and the Duchess of Gloucester into a prologue to begin the play, providing the audience with some brief political history and establishing the murderous guilt of both Richard II and Mowbray. The reordering also allows Gaines to compress 1.1 and 1.3 into a single scene, eliminating some redundancy and minimizing the text's first Act Verbosity.
The prologue features a pair of venerable Chicago performers, spot lit at the center of a thrust stage. The characters represent the mourning old guard in hand-wringing anxiety over what the new generation will bring to England. Their discussion dissolves into the 1.1 courtroom scene presided over by Richard. Two massive banks of lights flank an upstage center entrance and tower to the height of the theater. The circular light cans are separated by orderly wooden panels, so Richard's court seems to be dominated by a gigantic dual wine rack, and when used to blinding effect, as they are quite often, the lights are as dazzling as those at any music concert.
Richard II's court, guarded by uniformed officers, wears business suits and formal attire in an undefined but decidedly modern time. The arguments between Bolingbroke and Mowbray are punctuated by the observers' applause, as they stomp their feet and Gaunt taps his cane to indicate approval. Bolingbroke, played by a stoic Scott Jaeck in a conservative three-piece suit, throws down a glove as a gage, and the duel with Mowbray is to be fought with pistols.
The aborted 1.3 duel and decrees of banishment conclude in a rising rumble of sound effects, and Scott Parkinson's slight and lanky monarch seems visibly relieved. Parkinson removes his crown and casually tosses it to Bushy, then lounges in his throne like a spoiled child, one leg thrown over an armrest. The lights suddenly glow red and pulsate with the beat of loud dance music, and Richard's private court becomes a decadent discotheque. The favored few - "the caterpillars of the commonwealth" - dance and drink champagne with the King, then enjoy a torch-song serenade from a lounge singer who enters through the audience to croon "When You Have Friends" to the King. The Singer tickles, teases and taunts audience members as she sings and dances her way to the stage and the King's court. At the end of the scene, a pair of downstage dancers gyrate carnally as the ailing Gaunt arrives upstage for 2.1 in a wheelchair.
The modernization and formalwear diminish the historical impact of the play, with little sense of the medieval Divine Right passing to the pragmatic Renaissance, but a gritty sense of political change - quite timely with today's uneasy headlines - certainly remains. Parkinson's Richard begins as a smirking profligate, confident in his vain actions and the unassailable nature of his position. That Bolingbroke would even question his decrees, much less raise an army against him and turn the public against his throne, shakes Richard mightily, cracking the foundations of his kingship and his humanity. His fall to his knees and kissing of the English ground upon his return from Ireland in 3.2 seem sadly real rather than a melodramatic flourish. When he sits to ponder - "let's talk of graves" - his supposedly loyal court sit alongside him, and when he appears in 3.3 against Bolingbroke and Northumberland's army, he wears royal robes and wields his scepter, back lit in yellow and elevated above them on a railed platform.
Parkinson, with tears in his eyes, surrenders the crown and a long tradition, and the actor speaks with a riveting combination of personal regret and calm intelligence. His willingness to abdicate gives rise to an eerie sound effect of the steely rasp of an unsheathing blade, and the banks of lights glare then suddenly black out to signal intermission as well as political consequences and the passing of an era.
Richard's earlier 2.1 interaction with Gaunt offers insights into the King's character. The Queen, all but silent and wearing a pink mini-dress, a Jackie Kennedy-like hat, and black gloves, seems just an ornament as she offers the dying Gaunt a flower. During his accusations, Gaunt hurls the flower at her from his wheelchair, and in petulance, Richard moves behind the chair and drives it and Gaunt violently downstage. Gaunt spills from the overturned wheelchair into the arms of Aumerle. Richard then flips a table and serving tray - "so much for that" - in an indication of his tantrum-like temper.
Gaunt, while hoarse and frail, brims with passion and plain speaking, while the actor's 3.4 doubling as the Gardener, robust in vest, boots, hat, and gardening gloves, features veiled imagery and concealed criticism. The divided York is played with seething frustration. Silver-haired and wearing reading glasses, he scribbles notes in a black book like an administrator, but bravely confronts Bolingbroke and his soldiers in 2.3 with a rifle, standing alone against them. York defends with vehemence the King of the moment, whoever the monarch may be. The potentially interruptive 5.2 - during which Aumerle is discovered to be involved in a plot to assassinate Henry IV - plays with welcome energy, especially due to the sputtering York and the no-nonsense wrath of the Duchess. The Duchess stares down a servant who flings York's riding boots onstage then flees, and the scene sheds light on two good people's unwavering devotion to King and son, but unthinking loyalty to military usurper and traitorous assassin.
Gaines lessens some of the play's ponderousness and long stretches of dry but poetic monologue and dialogue with directorial flourishes. Gaines' touches include: Bushy's panicked 2.2 whisper that they "have no men" following a nervous swig from a flask: under a looming - and pointedly noncommittal - half moon, a trench-coated Bolingbroke's finger-wave "hello" to the rash Hotspur in 2.3; and the 3.1 execution of three "traitors," each with a pistol shot to the back of the head as they kneel before Bolingbroke.
Jaeck's burly Bolingbroke muscles his way to the crown with callous strength, then resembles Richard Nixon in slicked back hair, white shirt, and red-tied black suit as he presides over the 4.1 recriminations that mirror Richard's 1.1 court scene. Within horizontal yellow neon tubing upstage, the man-of-action Bolingbroke wearily watches the scramble of accusations and professions of loyalty at Bagot's center stage trial, and the hurling of gloves becomes a comic pile of clothing. Parkinson's Richard comments on - and raises a laugh at - the pile of gages with just a bemused raising of his eyebrows, then individually hands the favors back to the once-loyal men who threw them down.
Gaines presents 5.3 in calm blue neon, as Henry IV sips Scotch among his fat-cat, sweater-vested courtiers while Northumberland, in a yellow sweater, practices his golf putting stroke. The scene darkens when Henry draws a handgun against Aumerle, then later, with the stage in darkness except for a spotlight upon him, his haggard cry of "have I no friends?" is heard only by Exton. The 5.5 dungeon murder of Richard occurs with just nine bare red bulbs lighting the set, and Henry IV witnesses the assassination from upstage, standing in a doorway beneath a now fully waxed moon.
The production ends 5.6 with women wearing floral dresses and men linen suits, all sipping from champagne flutes as music plays, and the characters seem to have just emerged from The Great Gatsby. As his court walk past him at center stage, the new King, resplendent in white, becomes spattered with droplets of blood falling from above, and when he turns in horror to face the audience, the production concludes in a blackout.
Gaines continues her remarkable Chicago success with Richard II, rendering a play about the start of the War of the Roses in 1400 entertaining and relevant for modern audiences.
Note: A version of this article was edited and published in Shakespeare Bulletin, Vol.19, No.4, Fall 2001.