Summary 
Daring interpretation of a young Richard as a tragic and ingratiating rock-and-roll icon: devious but charming, he is subtle rather than histrionic, as are his slew of victims. A brilliantly lit production with spotlights concealed in gate spikes and shafts of yellow shooting from beneath the stage to enhance the political machinations. A jarring conclusion with the savior Richmond revealed as a homicidal maniac.
Design
Directed by Barbara Gaines. Set by Alex Okun. Costumes by Karin Kopischke. Lights by Kenneth Posner. Sound and music by Michael Bodeen.
Cast
Peter Aylward (Edward IV), Brendan Corbalis (Richard), Kevin Gudahl (Clarence/ Tyrrel), Mary Ann Thebus (Duchess), Lisa Dodson (Elizabeth), Brooks Darrah (Rivers), Scott Parkinson (Grey), Kathy Santen (Anne), Linda Kimbrough (Margaret), Robert Swan (Hastings), Robert Scogin (Stanley), Jack Sanderson (Catesby), Roderick Peeples (Ratcliffe/Brackenbury), Greg Vinkler (Buckingham).
Analysis
Conception of the title character can determine the success of a production of Richard III: Chicago's newspaper critics were particularly displeased with Shakespeare Repertory's vision of the Duke of Gloucester. The critics evidently expected Olivier's roaring malevolence or MacKellen's martial domination in the usual characterization of Richard as evil incarnate. Although these conceptions create potent drama through a powerful lead performance, director Barbara Gaines adopts a more subtle - if less melodramatic - approach for her Richard III. The result is effective, and in a shrewd presentation, equally as interesting.
Brendan Corbalis portrays Richard almost as a modern rock-'n'-roll icon. He is young, towering and lanky, dressed entirely in black. He has straight black hair worn extremely long, and he maintains a smirk that is sly yet ingratiating. Corbalis speaks softly and with ingenuous grace, employing his withered arm, pronounced hunchback, and baleful limp for pathos rather than as indications of a diabolic spirit.
With this subtlety, Richard's 1.2 seduction of Lady Anne is more believable, because the audience can see Richard as Lady Anne sees him: attractive, pained and tragic. From upon his knees and with shame, he reveals his deformed back to her, a horrific twist of flesh-colored latex. Although Corbalis does not present a whirlwind of York wickedness, he is convincing as a privately vicious schemer. Richard deceives with outward pretensions, as with Anne initially, and when he pretends to be the caring uncle in 3.1, and with the pious facade he shows the townspeople in 3.7. Ultimately, this Richard frightens because his manic brutality suddenly bursts through the fractured veneer of his boyishness and eloquence. Despite the distortions of his aspirations and physique, Corbalis' Richard seems a charismatic young man in the process of becoming a brutish monster rather than a consummate monster from the beginning.
Two strong supporting performances contributed to the general critical condemnation of Corbalis. The portrayals of Clarence and Margaret were thought to illustrate Richard's lack of vitality, but the strength of Clarence and Margaret actually highlights the subtlety of Richard's cunning. Clarence is depicted as crushed and bewildered. He speaks with a palpable ache and walks as though carrying a great burden. His behavior is steeped in guilt and contrition, reinforcing the fact that his brother behaves with carefree innocence while guilty of heinous crimes. Clarence's trust of Richard, like Anne's eventual attraction to him, seems natural because Corbalis' Richard successfully obscures his malevolence beneath a charming mask.
With the subtlety of the Richard characterization, Clarence's 1.4 scene in the Tower becomes a triumph of irony. Clarence laments while kneeling on slatted flooring. Lighting from beneath the floor cracks illuminates him with bright shafts of yellow. About to be murdered, the imprisoned Clarence is unaware of all the ways that Richard achieved his downfall. Margaret is played as a firebrand, raving with the fury expected from a typical Richard. Pointedly, her bombast provides the reason other characters discount her accusations throughout much of the play and demonstrates in counterpoint how Richard's quiet craftiness can be so insidious. Margaret's straggly gray hair reveals ugly patches of skull, and she dresses in rags to contrast the rich costuming of the other characters. An omnipresent accuser, she watches in the wings or from a spot-lit platform as Richard's machinations take place despite her warnings. In one of the production's more poignant moments, Margaret delivers her final condemnation of Richard accompanied in a whisper by the kneeling Elizabeth. Elizabeth will apparently follow in the dowager's grieving footsteps as a curser.
Gaines emphasizes subtlety and emotion rather than melodrama and violence. The female characters remain prominent, with few of their lines edited. They huddle together onstage as visual reminders of Richard's emotional damage. Consequently, Richard's political victims receive less stage time, as does the physical destruction he has wreaked.
Sparse lights maintain the dark mood. Most of the lighting comes from the sides or beneath the stage, or from scattered spotlights. The planked set is kept bare for most of the play, but the Ruth Page Theater features considerable depth and a thrusting stage, and a half-dozen wooden beams are suspended overhead from each side. The overall visual evokes the sense that events take place within the bowels of a massive church or within the galley of a ship. The moveable overhead beams come to blade-like points and hang over Richard's victims like swords about to fall. The beams are also fitted with lighting, and when lowered can spotlight individual actors from close positions.
The most dramatic visual occurs during the 5.3 dream sequence. Richard tosses and turns downstage while Richmond rests fitfully atop a large stone mantel upstage center. As Richard's nightmares begin, the mantel becomes a glowing red fireplace, and each of his victims emerges from the swirling inferno beneath Richmond. Dressed in rags and wearing ghostly make-up and wigs, much like the living Margaret, their curses echo with electronic amplification. Richard spasms with each name and jerks as if skewered by sword thrusts.
Later, during his single combat with Richmond, Richard gains the advantage and stands in position to strike the prone Tudor. The ghosts then reappear, all of them eerily back-lit and approaching with menace. Richard freezes with fear, and Richmond seizes the opportunity to kill him.
Gaines reinterprets the finale for a bleak revision of what was written as a glorious victory for Queen Elizabeth's grandfather. She chooses the closing image of her production for a comment on the physical and moral repugnance of world leaders. Early images include the syphilitic King Edward cavorting with a whore before becoming wracked with coughing fits. The next King, Richard, has his withered arm, hunchback, and limp to accentuate his considerable moral shortcomings. England's ultimate savior, then, would seem to be the saintly Richmond, a literal knight in shining armor. But in a startling and rather haunting final image, the eventual Henry VII removes his helmet after killing Richard. He reveals himself as grotesquely ugly, completely bald and heavily scarred, and he grins with apparently homicidal insanity.
Ironically, the shock at the unveiling of Richmond finally embodies the melodrama of bloodthirsty tyranny that disappointed Chicago critics expected all along from Richard III.
Note: A version of this article was edited and published in Shakespeare Bulletin, Vol.14, No.3, Summer 1996.