Summary 
Unconventional outdoor production driven by a ghoulish young Richard played as a psychopath - comedic, satanic, at times brilliant - in a daring performance. Many fascinating flourishes, including the severed heads with glowing eyes of Richard's victims and the return of the women in his life to haunt him in his final conflict, fuel an excellent overall production.
Design
Directed by Patrick O'Gara. Costumes by Tona Schrenck. Set by John Stark. Lights by Laura Manteuffel. Sound by Colleen Kenny.
Cast
Jay Whittaker (Richard), John Fischer (Clarence), Michael McAlister (Hastings), Laura Frances Love (Anne), Rebecca MacLean (Elizabeth), Matthew Lane Schwartz (Buckingham), Lisa Gaye Dixon (Margaret), Frank Nall (Edward), Cheryl Leigh Williams (Duchess).
Analysis
The outdoor set for Patrick O'Gara's staging of Richard III is dark and forbidding, with stone steps, spike-topped fences, and drab olive tarpaulins stretched taut around doorways. Heavy links of chain are strewn across the upper elevations of the gallery, and columns are topped with leering gargoyles. An ominous gate at center stage lowers and raises slowly with a low mechanical rumble and is used by O'Gara for dramatic effect, as when the gate rumbles to a definitive close in 4.1 to cut the princes off from their visitors.
O'Gara's surprisingly young cast is ably led by Jay Whittaker, who also played Richard in the Illinois Shakespeare Festival's 1998 world premiere adaptation of the Henry VI trilogy, The Falcon's Pitch. Enhanced by make-up, Whitaker's ghoulish Duke of Gloucester is ghastly pale in white-face, with darkened eyes and a red mouth like a slash across his face. Dressed entirely in black and sporting the typical crook back, curved foot, and withered arm, he resembles the super-villain Joker from Batman. Whittaker constantly flexes and unflexes his good right hand, and he seems to teeter between psychopathic and satanic, as evidenced by a maniacal giggle that at times descends into a diabolic laugh.
Whittaker's portrayal of Richard as a young and psychotic sociopath is certainly fresh and unconventional, and the actor champions the conception. Whittaker exudes confidence, and he wields the double-edged sword of blackest comedy with an expert precision that captures Richard and defines this entire production. In 1.2, he sheds tears for his brother Clarence, then gives the audience a deliciously knowing look, and his high-pitched "God forgive them" at the cursing of the women is both sarcastic and sardonic, just as his "I thank my God for my humility" to Edward in 2.1 is both mocking and apparently sincere. Whittaker slaps posts and benches with exuberance, and when he later crows, "I do the wrong," and raises his hand in nodding admission, he manages to make prayer and common niceties seem imbecilic.
O'Gara strikingly stages the 1.2 seduction of Lady Anne. The corpse of Henry VI lies on a bier at center stage, as white-faced as Richard and wearing majestic purple robes and black gloves. Anne mourns, accompanied by four hooded monks who intone low monastic chants. After Richard quickly disarms a royal guard and begins to woo her with his diabolic logic, the body of the murdered King begins to bleed again, and numerous bloodstains drip down the sides of the coffin. Anne, dressed in an emerald gown, spits at Richard, then lunges as if to stab him with his own dagger, and she tries several times but cannot bring herself to perform the deed. Whittaker's Richard breaks her resolve, and on their knees, they finally kiss. She bids him farewell from the gallery but behind a slatted gate, in an effective stage picture looking as if she is imprisoned.
Whittaker's Richard is the consummate actor, as becomes apparent in the displays of political reconciliation before the wan Edward IV in 2.1. Whittaker's Richard is at home in deceit and pretense, and his overtures and humility seem genuine. O'Gara makes an astute observation in his contrast of Richard with the other members of Edward's court. Hastings, Elizabeth, and Buckingham are abysmal actors, unable to even feign acceptance of reconciliation, and their eye rolls, hesitation, and perfunctory words betray their insincerity. At one point, Queen Elizabeth disgustedly lowers her hand away from Hastings' lips so he must pull her hand to his mouth to bestow a half-hearted kiss. Whittaker concludes the sequence - and the first act of the production - at the end of 2.4, when he refers to the duplicitous Buckingham as "my other self," and in a sudden glow of crimson light, slowly and lasciviously licks Edward's vacated throne.
The energetic evil of Whittaker's Richard propels the second act. His creepy interplay with the young heirs in 3.1 is chilling: he cradles the five-year-old, redheaded Duke of York in his arms, and the Prince of Wales' line of "if I live to be a man" is given ominous significance. Richard is manic in his overly silly laugh at the "sanctuary children," and terse in his remark to Buckingham - "chop off his head" - regarding what will be done with the stalwart Hastings, then suddenly depressive in a change of tone with, "something we will determine."
Richard's 3.7 pretense as a holy man - singing hymns, holding a prayer book, and reverently crossing himself - reveals him again as a supreme actor. When Buckingham merely says "'zounds," Whittaker covers his ears and implores the Duke not to swear in his presence. Later, during the ceremonial coronation with a red boar and rose heraldry aloft in the gallery, Richard rushes the stage - "stand all apart!" - and once crowned amid rising ceremonial chanting, he spins and shouts "King Richard, seated!" to a sudden blackout that signals the second intermission.
Whittaker's spectacular Richard is enhanced by capable supporting performances. Clarence - guilty, beaten, and worried - suffers nightmares while prone upon a cot that emerges on a platform beneath the gloom of the gallery. He is dispatched by murderers who hold him in a headlock, then stab him repeatedly, as the platform slides back under the gallery for an off-stage drowning in the vat of malmsey. The yellow-lit King Edward is played as more afflicted than lascivious - Jane Shorr is minimized - and his 2.1 anger in denying a pardon collapses dramatically into "I fear thy justice will take hold of me" and a break into a deadly coughing fit.
Most effective among the supporting roles is the Duchess of York, attired in shades of purple and walking with the aid of a cane. Her "butt-end" of a mother's blessing - an apathetic "God bless thee" to Richard - draws laughter, and she disarms a suicidal, dagger-bearing Elizabeth when Edward's death is announced. She also conducts the huddle of weeping women in 2.2 while Richard exults above them in the gallery, whistling happily.
The production's third act plays with the enthroned Richard no longer in need of his acting and deception skills. Instead, he is merely brutal, as evidenced by the severed heads of the executed Clarence, Rivers, Gray, Vaughan, and Hastings spitted upon the spiked top of the fence in the center of the gallery. The heads are horrifically realistic masks of the actual actors, with blank and staring eyes. In displays of his now singular savagery, Richard tells Buckingham, "I wish the bastards dead," in reference to the imprisoned princes, as fog swirls ominously around them, and he slaps the Duke across the face - "I am not in the giving vein" - when asked for promised payment.
O'Gara drives the play toward its bloody conclusion at a quick pace. The 4.3 murder of the princes is pantomimed with Tyrell describing the deed behind the gate in the gallery while the young princes struggle against the pillows and knives of the assassins around him.
The handsome and heroic Richmond rallies his troops with the accompaniment of martial drumming. Moments later, at stage left, Richmond prays on his knees, crossing himself and kissing the crucifix that hangs around his neck, then sleeps fitfully. At stage right upon a cot, Richard writhes through a graphic 5.3 nightmare sequence. The severed heads of his enemies, spitted upon the gate, suddenly have their black eyes light in glaring crimson. The startling image draws gasps from the audience. Then the disembodied voices of the executed intone ominously in amplified cursing - "despair and die" - before rising to a normal tone to bless the peaceful Richmond.
Richard awakes ("Is there a murderer here? - no, I am") and in apprehensive preparation for combat, straps a mace-like weapon to his withered arm. The battle at Bosworth Field is surreally staged with swirls of spotlights, red light, and stage fog. Individual combats are fast and furious for brief moments, then reduced into slow-motion with sound effects of armor clashing and shouts, as Richard kills "fake" Richmonds at center stage. The combat stops in dramatic freeze-frames before propelling again to fast-action with a renewal of spotlights, smoke, and red lighting.
In most other productions, directors simply edit the roles of the text's many female characters, or minimize their anguish and curses. O'Gara, however, highlights the female substance within Richard III, placing each of the characters deep within Richard's mind and conscience. At Bosworth Field, when Richard encounters the true Richmond, the single-combat is real-time and realistic, comprised of brutish bashes against armor and shield. During the struggle, the Duchess and Margaret appear and look on from the gallery. When Richard appears to have the upper hand, Lady Anne and then Queen Elizabeth both appear as ghost-like apparitions and slowly cross center stage from opposite angles, interrupting the combat to confuse and frighten Richard. The unnerved tyrant loses his advantage and is mortally wounded by Richmond.
Whittaker's Richard still manages a derisive laugh at the women that surround and haunt him, and he drags himself to center stage, where he dies, slumped and defeated. Richmond, the grandfather of Queen Elizabeth I, shows genuine concern for the fate of the Richard-threatened young Stanley, then unites the white rose with the red, as the producton, and the War of the Roses, concludes.
With the astute conception and sure-handed execution of director Patrick O'Gara at its core, this production of Richard III excels, but the root of its success lies within the daring and often brilliant portrayal by Jay Whittaker as the "bloody dog," Richard.
Note: A version of this article was edited and published in Shakespeare Bulletin, Vol.17, No.4, Fall 1999.