The Independent - Paul Taylor - Four Stars - Click here to read the full article
Another crowning glory for David Tennant and his majestic accomplice Gregory Doran
"They covered themselves in glory five years ago
with Hamlet; now David Tennant and Gregory Doran join forces again for
this lucid and gripping account of Richard II. . . . Tennant – in splendid form here – trains his
talents on the most self-absorbed and inward-looking of the Bard’s
monarchs,"
"Admirably resisting any temptation to make the king likeable, Tennant
vividly exudes the bored irritability that erupts in tyrannical caprice."
"With his great gift for playfulness, Tennant runs heavily sarcastic
rings round his usurper in the deposition scene. Holding the crown at
arm’s length, and with his back to the assembled company, he calls out
“Here cousin”, in the tones of someone inviting a dog to play fetch.
This is not a Richard who luxuriates in the lyricism of grief. Tennant
delivers the plaintive, self-pitying arias with a scathing irony for the
most part, flecked by tiny surrenders to abject panic – as though he
were at once sufferer and observer of the tragic process whereby, when
the royal persona shatters, it exposes the naked, insecure person underneath."
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David Tennant plays a consistently interesting Richard II, but it is the RSC's
older hands that really shine, says Dominic Cavendish
". . .Tennant, 42, is in his natural element."
"With his startled eyes and concentrated frown, Tennant is frail, pale and
consistently interesting but the nervous energy he excels in is confined to
quarters early on."
". . . and at the end, having taken on the aspect of Christ, he
appears aloft on a gantry, looking down in beatific accusation as
Bolingbroke contemplates the blood on his hands. Tennant shines, but he has
shone brighter."
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| David Tennant in the RSC's production of Richard II Photo: Alastair Muir |
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"David Tennant, in a mesmerising performance that grows in power as Richard's authority declines"
But there's a thrilling moment when Tennant gives the banished Mowbray a
piercing stare as if daring him to spill the beans about the king's
part in Gloucester's murder. Tennant combines inner guilt with a
careless disregard for realpolitik as he seizes the land and goods of
John of Gaunt after his death: a point reinforced here by the fact that
we see tuns of treasure being bodily transported."
"Tennant's strengths, as we know from his Hamlet,
are a capacity for quicksilver thought and an almost boyish
vulnerability. And, even if he might do more to convey the patterned
lyricism of the language, what he brings out excellently is the fact
that Richard only learns to value kingship after he has lost it. In his
decline, Tennant casually tosses the crown away and, at one point,
skittishly places it on the head of his adored Aumerle. But in the
Westminster deposition scene, where Tennant is at his best, he
challenges Bolingbroke to "seize the crown" and, when his rival rises to
the bait, immediately inverts it to suggest a falling bucket. Tennant's
great achievement is to attract our sympathy to what the gardener calls
a "wasteful king" who abuses power when he has it and who achieves
tragic dignity only in his downfall."
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| Photograph: ©Tristram Kenton |
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David Tennant's Richard is suburb, but that wig is the real star
As you can see from their headline the Mail was overly concerned with David's hair and painted fingernails but gave us some great pics!
"Mr Tennant is good, very good, but not yet a great. His performance lacks the final five yards of nobility.
You
get the feeling that Mr Doran has reined him in, yet once or twice the
character of D. Tennant escapes that of Richard of Bordeaux.
It jars
when he uses a modern facial gesture of disbelief in Act IV, scene one,
for ‘say that again – the shadow of my sorrow’. And he could inject more
poetry into ‘for God’s sake let us sit upon the ground and tell sad
stories of the death of kings’.
As
the run continues he may well trust the rhythm of the verse a little
more, and check those little squeaks of personal vanity."
"Despite those
quibbles, this is a definitive production of a great play"
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