[In the following excerpted review, Hornby praises the performance of Ralph Fiennes in the title role of Richard II as directed by Jonathan Kent in 2000, but laments the substandard quality of his supporting cast.]

Coriolanus opened too late for review here, but I did manage to catch a preview of Richard II, a play that has special meaning for me. Forty-three years ago, when I was an undergraduate, a friend recruited me as an extra for a college production of the play. I carried banners for the armies of both Richard and Bolingbroke, shifted furniture about, and tried to look serious and warlike when standing at attention. I helped carry John of Gaunt in a sedan chair (I got the back); when he soared into the great “This other Eden, demi-paradise” speech, I was never certain whether I should act interested, or bored, or severely disapproving. I myself had not a single line to speak.

Unaware that there were two Shakespearean Richard plays, I was disappointed to find no hump, and only one murder, of Richard himself. Richard II is a static play, ploddingly adapted from Holinshed; the big inciting event is a joust that does not take place. (Richard stops the trial by combat between Mowbray and Bolingbroke, unfairly banishing both, which ultimately leads to Bolingbroke's coup d'état.) I had not realized that something so purely lyrical could be so dramatic. Spellbound, I listened again and again to the famous abdication scene, even though it contains no suspense whatever, since Bolingbroke by that time has total control of the country. Richard is defeated, sarcastic, and self-pitying, yet his beautiful speeches make the underlying issue of the Divine Right of Kings versus realpolitik so clear and poignant that they become universal. The problem of what legitimizes government affects every age and culture.

Subsequent Richards whom I have seen never sounded so good as my memory of that undergraduate actor long ago, whose name I cannot even remember. Was he really that good, or was I just naive? Now it no longer matters, because Ralph Fiennes has surpassed him and all the others on a fast track.

Fiennes is a beautiful speaker of verse, as any actor playing Richard, Shakespeare's most poetic role, would have to be. His voice is light but resonant, with excellent diction, and dazzling variations and contrasts, despite a fast pace. The opening trial scenes were staged in a formal, ritualistic manner, against which Fiennes was flippant, even laughing at times. Yet he could also be magisterial, as when he suddenly roared at Bolingbroke, “We were not born to sue, but to command!” at the end of the first scene. He was wonderfully petulant in the deposition scene, clutching the crown to his chest like a child with a toy, yet serenely poignant in his final, death scene. I have always been impressed with Fiennes's screen acting, but it was inspiring here to see (and hear) how much more he is capable of.

The theatre at the Gainesborough Studios resembles the Théâtre National Populaire in Paris, a big unadorned space with many rows of seats on scaffolding, in front of a huge open stage. Jonathan Kent directed the show, with designs by Paul Brown, who covered the stage with grass. Otherwise, there was little except bits of furniture brought on and off, sometimes as part of the action, as when Richard entered at the beginning on a gothic sedan chair. Nonetheless, the building itself, with its high ceilings and decaying brick walls (with holes blasted through for stage entrances and exits), provided a medieval atmosphere that was profound.

Unfortunately, the supporting cast for Richard II was not up to Fiennes's level. David Burke overacted horribly as Gaunt, bellowing his way through “This other Eden” until I wanted to weep in frustration. Oliver Ford Davies was a forgettable York, sibilant in speech and undercharacterized. Perhaps the Almeida, which has rarely before done large cast shows, much less Shakespeare, cannot attract a company on a par with those of the RSC or RNT, or perhaps it is just too early to tell.