Shakespeare en devenir

“I love myself. I hate myself.” Richard III, dir. Evgeny Titov

Par Imke Lichterfeld
Publication en ligne le 14 décembre 2024

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“I love myself. I hate myself.” Richard III, dir. Evgeny Titov (version PDF) (application/pdf – 436k)

Düsseldorf Schauspielhaus,
William Shakespeare: Richard III, dir. Evgeny Titov
Design: Etienne Pluss
Costumes: Esther Bialas
Sound: Moritz Wallmüller
Light: Konstantin Sonneson
Dramaturgy: Janine Ortiz

Cast
Richard: André Kaczmarczyk
Queen Elizabeth: Judith Rosmair
Queen Margaret: Friederike Wagner
Duchess of York: Manuela Alphons
Lady Anne et al.: Claudia Hübbecker
Hastings: Blanka Winkler
Rivers: Pauline Kästner
Edward IV: Jochen Moser / Hans Meyer-Rosenthal
Princess Elizabeth: Sae Hanajima
Prince Edward: Luke Dopheide
Prince Richard: Theodor Taprogge / Rafael Wohlleber

Premiere: 2 September 2023
Running time: 2 hours

1Shakespeare’s Richard III is a history play about the rise and fall of the last Plantagenet king, the Yorkist Richard of Gloucester, the hunchbacked antihero. Shakespeare, following the Tudor historiography of his time, depicts him as an arch-villain. As the third son, Richard was never to hope for the crown. In the play, however, plotting the murder of his middle brother and his nephews and waiting for his sickly eldest brother’s death, Richard, in the manner of a perfect stage-Machiavel, succeeds in gaining the crown—albeit for a short time only. Ultimately, he is defeated by the young Tudor hero Henry, Earl of Richmond, who will ascend to the throne of England as Henry VII, grandfather to the reigning monarch alive at Shakespeare’s time, Queen Elizabeth I.

2The play deals with intrigues and murders, ensnaring politics, and Richard’s fascinating ruthlessness. The devious protagonist involves his audience by granting them insight into his machinations while never disguising his evil intentions; for these, he is punished in the final battle at Bosworth Field.

3Schauspielhaus Düsseldorf stages Thomas Brasch’s translation, originally intended for five female and thirty male actors, but reduced to two men, three children, and six women. There are essential cuts to this production. Moreover, the director introduces a clear opposition between the male protagonist and the female opposition. The stage is mostly well-lit, the setting is rather clinical; the space seems to be a vast industrial or grand building with security cameras. Later scenes are moved into wider rooms, including an impressive panoptical control room—this underlines the central theme of the play: who is in control? Who is in charge? Who is in power?

4The play is canonical, the eponymous role often defining the climax of an actor’s career. Lead actor André Kaczmarczyk (nominated for the German Theaterpreis Faust for this role) had been directed by Kazakhstan-born Evgeny Titov before. In 2021, they collaborated on a stunning and nerve-wracking Macbeth, whose mind was infiltrated by spidery thoughts about power and ambition. In Richard III, Titov once more demonstrates how well he has permeated Shakespeare’s themes and characters—and that he can reduce these to their essence. Currently, Titov is preparing a third Shakespeare, once more about the machinations of power: his King Lear will premiere in February 2025.

5The staging is modern, and the adaptation is grotesque: Kaczmarczyk’s Richard is a deformed yet agile creature. His face is distorted by a net over his head, making him physically repulsive; his feet are dressed with uneven, golden clubs. It looks challenging to walk with these feet, yet Richard seems well-practised—this detail underlines that he can supposedly deal with the deformity. He is ugly on the outside and the inside; as the play demands, he is ‘determined’ to be a villain. The costume is shiny and eclectic: there is and will be more gold reflecting his pompous status later in the show. In her contribution to the programme, dramaturgue Janine Ortiz quotes the band “Deutsch-Österreichisches Feingefühl”’s 1983 song “Codo” which contains the lyric “Ich bin so hässlich. Ich bin der Hass” translating to “I am so ugly. I am hate”. Indeed, Titov’s and Kaczmarczyk’s clear understanding of Richard shines through: he is an ambitious narcissist in disguise. He is playing with an inferiority complex, haughtily uttering “I think I might be underestimating myself and my value”. His eccentricity is often contrasted with the women who are dressed either in black or white, usually recalling early modern or Victorian dresses—or of different shades of red. His ancient foe, the former and aged Queen Margaret (Friederike Wagner), for example, dressed in purple, does seem to be on par for a few glimpses: she impresses him with her haughty curses, if only for a moment.

Figure 1. Düsseldorf Schauspiel, Richard III, 2024, dir. Evgeny Titov.
Richard III (André Kaczmarczyk) and Queen Margaret (Friederike Wagner).

Crédits. Thomas Rabsch (URL).

6Richard is a misogynist par excellence: he plots while women are polishing his shoes. The deformed man wields power opposite supposedly “weak” women, inventively calling them moles, “Dreckfrack” [dirty suit], cucumbers, caricatures. He discards them as he pleases, as his short stint with the deceased Prince of Wales’ widow, Lady Anne, demonstrates. He then moves onto more alienating territory and woos his young niece to absurdly “make amends” (IV.4.309) for the loss of her brothers, claiming superficially “Say that I did all this for love of her” (IV.4.302), which sounds even more grotesque in Brasch’s translation: “An allem war nur die Liebe Schuld”—penitence is non-existent, it is ‘love’s fault’. As the actor of his niece is a young girl, this feels nauseating. Yet, the women will have their hour. While he abuses women, they will later collaborate against him.

7The only other male actors in this production portray his sickly brother Edward IV who soon dies in a bed with a dirty, bloody cloth in a corner of the stage in a palace with ramshackle walls, and the two young nephews, soon executed after being led off with a melodic nursery rhyme “We’re going to the tower now!” Their influence is inane. All other male parts are cut including that of Richard’s final adversary, the Earl of Richmond and later King Henry VII. Deleting his triumph allows the performance to completely focus on the downfall of the protagonist due to his own ruthless regime.

8Kaczmarczyk certainly stands out as a disgusting male persona on stage. He provokes ridicule that turns to anguish, as when he licks his desired wife, Lady Anne’s spit. At the same, a lacking self-confidence and possible PTSD are apparent. These, he compensates with a hypersexuality: This Richard often plays with his large genitals, which could be interpreted as underlining hypermasculinity. He is undoubtedly toxic. An impressive and shocking scene takes place when virtually naked Richard—goblin-like—watches himself reflected in a fivefold mirror, provoking disgust, fascination, and fear.

Figure 2. Düsseldorf Schauspiel, Richard III, 2024, dir. Evgeny Titov.
Richard III (André Kaczmarczyk).

Crédits. Thomas Rabsch (URL).

9Richard grotesquely claims to build a “house of friendship from this pile of hate-ridden broken glass”. Funnily and fatefully enough, this will happen, but not under his command.

10The performance might appear misogynistic at the beginning, but it is not. Apart from the royal women, Richard’s supporter Hastings and the role of Rivers are cast with female actors. All—adversaries at the beginning—learn to collaborate in the course of this production. They grieve together—a fact that the setting formidably underlines when coffin after coffin is brought on stage. However, they also adhere to the idea of kalokagathia—normative stereotypes of outer corresponding to inner beauty—and despise the physically deformed Richard. This includes his mother, the Duchess of York (Manuela Alphons), who collapses and claims her preference for death: “I to my grave” (IV.1.101). The women of York and Lancaster first call out their inimical blasphemies against each other; later they feel empathy and support each other against the tyrant. A fact that strikes here is the range of the female voices filling the stage—though only six, they become ubiquitous, their weakness and strength, their grief and anger fully apparent, at some point, all dressed in black, mourning together. The women bond when Queen Elizabeth, then widow of the deceased king and mother to the doomed princes, confirms: “Alas, I am the mother of these griefs” (II.2.82) Friendship, or at least community, is visibly forged between them throughout the evening. Thus, the performance underlines the role of women—as compatriots, sufferers, ghosts, agents of fortune, vengeance, and justice.

11Because of the cuts of the final battle, the play does not end with the blessing of the young hero, a victory, and hope for the future of a Tudor monarchy. It ends after all the women—echoing the maledictions of the ghosts from the Shakespearean text—curse and stab Richard. All remain as witnesses of his reign but with bloody hands. Revenge for Richard’s murders has been fulfilled.

Figure 3. Düsseldorf Schauspiel, Richard III, 2024, dir. Evgeny Titov.
Richard III (André Kaczmarczyk) and Hastings (Blanka Winkler).

Crédits. Thomas Rabsch (URL).

12At the end of the production, the dying king is left all alone on stage. The scene is absurdly funny, satisfactory, and yet pitiful: “Is there a murderer here”, he questions. “No. Yes, I am” (V.3.196). Full of doubt, this Richard dutifully utters the lines “I love myself” and cuts the “rather” in “I […] hate myself.” Alone, he calls for a horse and dies.

13Düsseldorf presents an exquisite adaptation of Shakespeare’s famous play: compelling, disturbing, and feminist. It leaves the audience with a bitter taste of warfare and gender awareness, portrayed via preposterous and defiant scenes.

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