Kevin Spacey in Richard III: Now is the winter of our discontent

When I lived in London, I went to see Kevin Spacey perform at the Old Vic Theatre every chance I got. The theatre is not in the West End, but on the south side of the river near Waterloo Station. It dominates its corner block on the intersection of Waterloo Road and The Cut because it is freestanding and three storeys high, with nothing nearby to overshadow it. On performance nights, I would round the corner into Waterloo Road and see the theatre all lit up like a magic cave. My step would quicken at the sight, knowing that on this night I would get to go in and be part of the magic.

I would often have dinner at the Anchor and Hope pub on The Cut, just down the road from the theatre. It is what the English charmingly call a “gastropub” – a term I despise firstly because it always makes me think of some kind of stomach bug and secondly because I think a pub with good food should be the norm rather than a special breed requiring a new name. The English may have invented the pub but sadly many modern English pubs are hideous chains devoid of any character, serving horrid frozen food.  New South Wales certainly has a few problems with pub licensing laws but at least we don’t have the “pub corp”. Anyway, the Anchor and Hope is the opposite of all that – it’s small and quirky with wooden tables and food that is very English and also excellent. I haven’t been there since I left the UK in 2009 but it seems from this recent Time Out review that it’s still around and still good.

Kevin Spacey has been artist director at the Old Vic for several years now. He also acts in a good number of the plays. It’s been an interesting time for the Old Vic artistically. I have to say I saw a few duds – for example, The Soldier’s Tale (2006) was awful and Resurrection Blues (2006) was mediocre but I also note that Spacey didn’t actually act in either of those. Everything I saw Spacey in was excellent – such as National Anthems (2005), A Moon for the Misbegotten (2006) and Speed-the-Plow (2008). (All links to my reviews on this blog). Seeing him on stage in a dramatic scene was simply electrifying.

So when I heard that the Spacey production of Richard III - one of Shakespeare’s great plays but one that I had never actually seen – would be touring Sydney in December, I knew that I really wanted to go. I was gobsmacked by the price – we paid $285.50 for two tickets (including booking fees) in pretty average seats – but I shelled out because I thought it would be a really good treat after not getting out much all year.

I only got more excited as the months wore on. I heard that the season in London sold out and friends who saw it there reported good things. I love theatre and  I have been somewhat deprived this year, not surprisingly given that I gave birth to twins in February! I have seen precisely three films at the cinema (Blue Valentine, Rango and The Hunter) and three live performances, besides Richard III (Doctor Zhivago, Summer of the Seventeenth Doll and Romeo and Juliet at the ballet).

The play was staged at the Lyric Theatre in Star City Casino. On my only previous outing to the Lyric I had official restricted view seats. They weren’t kidding about the view being restricted – there was about a quarter of the stage that I simply couldn’t see. So I avoided that option for Richard III. You might think that $285.50 would buy two pretty good seats but actually that was the starting price for seats that were not restricted view. If there were any cheaper tickets, they had sold out by the time I made our booking. Still, I took some care with seat selection and looked at options for several performance nights to optimise the best seats for the price. We wound up in the middle of the second row of the Grand Circle, the circle above the Dress Circle.

There were tickets available in the first row as well but I am wise enough in the ways of theatres to know that the view is often better from the next row back because of the balcony ledge. Still it is pretty far back and in hindsight I should have just decided that $285.50 was too much to pay for such seats, no matter who is on stage. Anyway, I went ahead and booked.

We arrived at the theatre via the food court in the newly renovated section of the casino. The food court has a gelato store and we paid a visit during the intermission. (I highly recommend this. Inside the theatre, you get boring old Choc Tops; at the gelato store you get delicious flavours like rhubarb and pear or roasted fig. No contest, really).

We turned down the offer to pay $20 for a program and, as time was short, we went straight to our seats. (I like programs but $20 is just too much – you can buy a book for that sort of money, even in Australia!) Unfortunately, the seats were even worse than I thought – the ledge at the Lyric is so wide that even in the second row we both had to sit perched forward on our seats in order to see the edge of the stage. My husband commented to me that he was amazed they weren’t sold as ‘restricted view’. What could I say? They weren’t. The seats were OK, but definitely not worth the money.

The play started with that famous line “now is the winter of our discontent” and we were swept into the action. It was directed by Sam Mendes and made a few interesting choices. The set had a lot of doors, which allowed for fast-paced, simultaneous entrances and exits. Margaret seemed to be interpreted as a ghost and was a recurring presence, even when she had no speaking part. The characters were mostly in modern dress and there were modern twists such as scenes where Richard III gave a televised address and scenes where members of the public were depicted as commuters on the London Underground. I liked it because it gave an interesting commentary on the role of public opinion in politics both then and now. On the other hand, my husband would have preferred more of a spectacle given that they were charging “musical prices”.

Spacey made an excellent Richard III – he was suitably villainous with his hunch and his unrestrained greed and lust, yet he also had excellent comic delivery. This brought a great deal of unexpected humour to the play but didn’t detract from the drama and tragedy. All of the performances were very good but Spacey’s performance was clearly a crucial one because Richard III is both protagonist and narrator and in nearly every scene. He really was as good as I remembered him.

The big problem was that the play was staged without any consideration of the fact that there were human beings in the audience. Like all Shakespeare plays, Richard III is quite long and it has a three-act structure – and is therefore designed to be run with two intermissions! Previously when I’ve seen Shakespeare plays with only one intermission, they have been cut down to a couple of hours in length.

The Spacey production of Richard III started at 8pm and it was 10pm before we were given our first – and only – intermission. It finished at a quarter to midnight with over three and a half hours of stage time and only one 20-minute break. This is too much to ask of audiences! We are human beings and we need our toilet breaks and refreshments. This is true even for the lightest fare, but Shakespeare, while fantastic, does require some concentration.

Thus I found myself in the frustrating situation of seeing some of the best Shakespeare of my life performed in front of me … while I struggled not to fall asleep. I was desperate for the intermission so I could get some caffeine into me and I deeply resented the fact that I had paid all that money but couldn’t enjoy myself properly. I should have booked the matinee but I had no idea they were going to stage it this way. If the intermission had come at the end of the first act like it was supposed to, I could have actually enjoyed the rest of the play. But it didn’t.

You might think this is just a case of a new mother being tired and it is true that I am and was – but it wasn’t just me! The guy next to me was seriously nodding off too, even more than I was. (No, I don’t mean my husband – the guy on the other side!). After complaining about this in Twitter, I heard from people in Singapore and London who had experienced the same thing. Clearly, in order to have more breaks and finish at a reasonable time, the play would have needed to start earlier. I fail to see the problem here – plenty of shows start at 7pm or 7.30pm.

I am unlikely to see another performance at the Lyric Theatre. I just don’t like the layout of the theatre, the fact it is at the casino and the propensity to overcharge. I probably would see Spacey on stage again but another time, in another place, and not at those prices.

I did enjoy it and objectively I rate it highly but mostly I just felt cheated. How disappointing that such a good production was let down by such mundane things. Now is the winter of our discontent, indeed.

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