4 Star Sunday Times Review

The Sunday Times

Richard II
Tobacco Factory
Bristol

****

Enter the king: young and nervy, arrogant but insecure. Power is exciting but slippery, so you must watch yourself – it’s like a game, but you haven’t quite grasped the rules. John Heffernan plays Richard with sparkling intelligence and delicate feeling. This is a political tragedy of misused power and wasted ambition, of a ruler who is most obsessed by his own feelings and watches himself playing his roles like a fretful actor. This is Shakespeare at his most subtle and most ruthless, dissecting the price of power, of honesty and dishonesty. Matthew Thomas is a powerful Bullingbrooke, cool and shrewd, destroying his cousin Richard with a blend of sadness and impatience, and Roland Oliver’s Duke of York is a masterclass in how to combine shrewd diplomacy, rueful compromise, anger and avuncular humour. Andrew Hilton’s production is lucid and gripping, and the company acting could show a thing or two to some of our distinguished directors.

John Peter
27th February 2011