[In the following review, Mitchell finds little merit in director John Farrell's modern-dress, ninety-minute filmed version of Richard II, emphasizing weak individual performances and a lack of directorial vision.]

John Farrell's film adaptation of Richard II features a group of actors cowed by the breadth of material that calls for performers to float on the martial breathiness of the dialogue. A recent Signet version of the play includes an essay by the scholar Richard D. Altick, in which he quotes Walter Pater's assessment: “It belongs to a small group of plays, where, by happy birth and consistent evolution, dramatic form approaches to something like the unity of a lyrical ballad, a lyric, a song, a single strain of music.”

All we get in this filmed version of Richard II is the strain with performers gasping like landed trout trying to get the intonations right. They don't seem to be listening to each other, but instead wait for the opportunity to blurt.

Mr. Farrell has his cast in contemporary military garb, clutching machine guns close to their pectorals and narrowing their gazes: Richard (Matte Osian) wears a flashy red silk around his neck that is similar to the ascot Robert Duvall's Colonel Kilgore wrapped around his clavicle in Apocalypse Now.

At the very least, this Richard, which opens today at the Two Boots Den of Cin (44 Avenue A, at East Third Street, East Village), stands meekly in the shadow of film versions that have come before. In offering his rendition of the medieval English king whose wisdom comes only after he is deposed and condemned, Mr. Farrell seems to have gone over Julie Taymor's Titus with a fine-toothed comb. He's given it a more updated psychological spin by showing us a shattered Richard II, curied into a fetal ball and prone on a floor in the dark. It's a startling way to begin the play, because it suggests that he wants to offer it to the camera in flashback, contrasting the proud ruler to the man stunned into second sight.

It's a test of the filmmaker's mettle to stage Richard II in this way. And as much as we might admire his ambition, Mr. Farrell's misfire becomes a test of the audience's resolve. The film was shot with digital cameras, which has the unfortunate effect of making Richard II seem as if it's unfolding in streaming video from the Internet; you might give this look the benefit of the doubt on your laptop, but it quickly becomes annoying in a theater.

Mr. Farrell's updating is a pro forma way of making Richard his own: it is not entirely clear why he's moved the play up to the present, since the staging carries no resonance. Mr. Farrell wants to shake up the testosterone quotient by casting a woman as the banished Duke of Aumerle, but Ellen Zachos struggles more than anyone—she's not quite capable of the “daring tongue” Shakespeare attributes to this lord.

When Mr. Farrell frames one actor at a time, his Richard II is easier to watch, particularly when Mr. Osian is onscreen. Though he's a bit too eager to feel Richard's pain, he's perfectly good at expressing it. With the exception of these moments. Richard II is like watching a digital version of a master's thesis.