Richard III. Friargate Theatre, Lower Friargate, York.
Wednesday April 26, Thursday April 27 and Friday April 28 @ 7.30pm and Saturday April 29 @ 2.30pm and 7.30 pm.
York Shakespeare Project has a new mission; it promises to perform all of Shakespeare’s plays, and the best of his contemporaries, in the next 25 years. It is delighted to launch this bold endeavour with Richard III. In 2002 it was the first play which YSP ever performed, in Elizabethan garb. In contrast, our 2023 incarnation, part of the York International Shakespeare Festival, is rooted firmly in the Twenty First Century.
The production is set in a frenetic, calculating and brutal Westminster, with endless Machiavellian bloodletting and daily treacheries. Director Daniel Roy Connelly proposes that the England of Richard III could hardly be closer to now; the play explores the cut and thrust of power’s crucible, with laws ignored and lies sown. Richard’s watchword? “My conscience hath a thousand several tongues, and every tongue brings in a several tale, and every tale condemns me for a villain”.
Audiences may find Connelly’s contemporary vision remarkably familiar. Richard and Buckingham excel as social media manipulators within a world of warring political parties. In the shadowy corridors of power, everyone is culpable.
Daniel Roy Connelly is a former British diplomat, theatre director, actor, author and academic. He has acted in and directed theatre in America, the UK, Italy and China, where his 2009 production of David Henry Hwang’s M Butterfly was forced to close by the Chinese secret police.
Tickets available online: www.ticketsource.co.uk/ridinglights or from the Box Office 01904 655317.