Summary 
Dark vision of curses and ambition, with the tyrant York memorably played as longhaired and leather-clad, resembling a modern rock star. Socially inept but a supreme actor, this Richard connives his way to the throne with outward charm. Strong portrayals of Richard's brothers (doubled by the same actor) as well as the women within the court. A five-piece live orchestra plays a menacing score and the somber staging evokes the atmosphere of an English Macbeth rather than a historical chronicle.
Design
Directed by Martha Henry. Designed by Allan Wilbee. Lights by Louise Guinand. Sound by Todd Charlton. Compositions by Stephen Woodjetts. Fights by James Binkley.
Cast
Tom McCamus (Richard), Scott Wentworth (George/King Edward IV), David Francis (Brakenbury), Wayne Best (Hastings), Sarah Dodd (Anne), Seana McKenna (Queen Elizabeth), Donald Carrier (Rivers), Jeffrey Wetsch (Grey/Herbert), Peter Hutt (Buckingham), John Dolan (Stanley), Diane D'Aquila (Queen Margaret), Patrick Galligan (Catesby), Nicolas Van Burek (Ratcliffe), Lally Cadeau (Duchess of York), Claire Jullien (Mistress Shore), Graham Abbey (Richmond), Michael Therrault (King Henry VI).
Analysis
Director Martha Henry begins Richard III with the amplified voice of the Duke of Gloucester - "now 'tis the winter of our discontent" - seemingly disembodied. The empty stage features a withered tree with gnarled branches at stage right, a series of stone arches beneath twisted tree branches, and a two-level platform with a staircase. The design - heavy with gray steel and stone, brown wood and rough burlap - appears fittingly coarse and raw. Stratford Festival veteran Tom McCamus emerges from a hiding place within the blasted tree, climbing down to directly address the audience with the remainder of the opening soliloquy. With wavy, long brown hair and a long black leather jacket, McCamus resembles an aging Mick Jagger-like rock-and-roll star, dragging his clubfoot downstage to reveal to the audience his limp, withered arm, and hunched back. He stumbles and falls, rising quickly but in a fury, both embarrassed by his deformities and filled with rage at his afflictions. Before the soliloquy ends, McCamus' Richard confides his evil intent, at one point turning to feign urination into the Avon Theatre's orchestra pit.
McCamus plays Richard with mischievous enthusiasm, an endearingly clumsy energy in social situations that renders his personal asides - revealed with a nasty cunning and hard-edged tone from McCamus - all the more chilling. McCamus' sociopathic Richard is a physical mess, contorted and twitching in spasms that embarrass him publicly and infuriate him privately. Richard keeps a dagger concealed in his boot, and during particularly fierce seizure-like tremors, McCamus retrieves the knife and struggles to apply pressure with the dull edge against a nerve in his hand to quell the twitching. McCamus expertly reveals a multi-faceted Richard: a consummate actor and pretender, he falls to his knees and embraces his doomed brother George, the Duke of Clarence, desperately around the waist; a physically deformed monster in 2.1, he clumsily trips over a chair leg, then crashes into a table to upend a goblet of wine; and a sinister supposed protector in 3.1, he boyishly pulls his nephews' wooden toy horse across the stage via a length of twine, calmly accepting their gibes.
Henry enhances McCamus' memorable Richard a live five-piece orchestra as well as with a series of strong supporting performances, especially the women in the play. The women, all attired in heavy layers of brocade with elaborate head-dresses, have pivotal moments within the production that provide keen insights. Lady Anne, her long dark hair obscuring her grieving expression, attempts to escape the murderer of her father-in-law, but Richard stops her by stepping upon the train of her dress. Margaret, all in black with dark hair and flashing eyes, reveals the venom and intelligence of the curser, ironically wearing a cowl, carrying a crucifix, and counting on the beads of a rosary as she lambasts and condemns Richard. And most tellingly, Richard's second attempt to seduce a royal woman fails, with the aloof Elizabeth biting his lip to foil his attempt to kiss her and seal a bargain. Richard's cohorts - Catesby, Ratcliffe, and especially Buckingham - are well-played and similarly attired in leather and boots, all wearing long hair as to seem mates in a kind of medieval rock-and-roll band. And Scott Wentworth doubles as both Clarence and Edward, ironically playing the death scenes of the brothers in quick succession made more vivid by Henry's clever casting choice.
The production's key performance is McCamus' Richard, and McCamus carries the show on his crooked back. He offers a coin to a beggar to impress standers-by, but snatches the coin away when attention drifts; he directs the speed and volume of trumpeters and percussionists with precise instructions, conducting the music as he plays the politicians around him; and he begins the second act to rousing fanfare, arriving in royal robes and carrying both orb and scepter, but McCamus' Richard demurely sits just in the corner of his new throne, as if the dignity of the crown were too humbling for him, and with mock piety, he turns his face in shame from the audience, only to slyly sneak a peek back. The performance brims with confidence, delivered with sharp intelligence and filled with deliciously evil black comedy. McCamus' Richard wears the crown throughout the second half of Henry's production - adjusting it while munching on a pear in the early moments, again later while counting off a list of eliminated political enemies with obsessive-compulsive grandeur, and he refuses to exchange it for a battlefield helmet at the conclusion.
Henry ingeniously utilizes the tents at Bosworth Field - on the night before the critical battle - for disturbing projections of the cursing ghosts. With Richard asleep stage right, restlessly calling out in nightmare, and Graham Abbey's handsome Richmond sleeping fitfully stage left, images of Richard's victims - in fearfully pale facial close-ups - appear on the tents to alternately damn Richard and bless Richmond, the voices amplified to eerie effect. Apart from McCamus' compelling portrayal in so many places, this is the most dramatically effective scene within Henry's production.
McCamus' Richard battles fiercely in the concluding scene, his bravery and fearlessness echoing that of Macbeth's, although he seeks Richmond much as Macduff sought the Scottish King. Richard is felled only when Richmond discovers the dagger within the tyrant's boot at the last moment and stabs him in the groin with it. In a disturbingly unheroic conclusion - "peaces lives again: a sardonic remark - Richmond and his followers strap the dying Richard into a harness and hang him upside down - ironically, from the same gnarled tree in which he was concealed at the production's beginning - and McCamus' Richard sways in his death throes. Pointedly, his still-twisted body convulses horribly when the crown is removed by Richmond - the allusion being that political ambition is the cause of the physical (and emotional) deformity within Richard, again a la Macbeth - and as the character expires, McCamus untwists his torso and straightens, and his arm loosens and dangles normally as well, as if the tyrant has indeed been freed from a curse at the end of the War of the Roses.
Insightfully directed, the strong supporting performances and eerie staging bolster this production, subtitled Reign of Terror, but this is a play demanding star power, and the production succeeds admirably well, judging by the vociferous standing ovation given Tom McCamus at the curtain call.