Award-winning actor and playwright Kate Mulvany ( Bernhardt/Hamlet, The Twelve ) delivers a virtuosic one-person tour de force, embodying all the characters of William Shakespeare’s audacious play about power and cutthroat ambition.
Mulvany’s ingenious adaptation, directed by Ian Michael ( Troy ), sheds a new light on the misunderstood Machiavellian figure of Richard III. Part stand-up comic, part broken child and part delicious villain, Richard charms and disarms not just the characters caught in his web, but also the audience with his trademark swagger and caustic wit. Drawing on her own lived experience of disability, Mulvany injects a riveting authenticity to her multiple roles, interrogating the differing ways in which power is wielded by disabled and able-bodied individuals.
When the unstable peace between the York and Lancaster families is disrupted by the death of the reigning monarch, the eldest York son is named king. This incenses the youngest of the Yorks, Richard, who is envious of his brother’s ascension and resentful of the people’s enmity towards his own ‘crookback’ condition. Following a series of murderous schemes, Richard manages to claim the throne – but, as he soon learns, heavy is the crown acquired through envy, slaughter and seduction.
