[In the following review, Morley positively assesses Barry Kyle's 2003 all-female production of Richard III at the Globe Theatre, noting that “[t]his Richard III asks whether the king is inherently evil, or just the intelligent but warped product of an unloved and unloving family.”]

There are few London treats more delicious than a beautiful evening, a good picnic, and Shakespeare in the open air.

At Shakespeare's Globe this summer, you can find a most unusual Richard III. It seems unlikely that Shakespeare meant Richard III to be a comedy, nor for almost every line to be delivered as if by a stand-up comedian, but it sort of works as long as it wasn't Shakespeare you wanted.

There's the small matter of an all-female company, for a start. If there has to be a group of women playing, perversely, some of Shakespeare's most macho men, we could have done a great deal worse than Kathryn Hunter's ironic and humorously amoral Richard.

Hunter starts as she means to continue, with a risky strategy of playing the murderer king against the modern convention that his deformity is in his mind. Hunter's body is so twisted that she lollops along at a sometimes horizontal angle which barely keeps her from toppling over. With not just a hump but an inverted hand and a withered arm, her body becomes her most useful prop.

The director Barry Kyle's light touch with the production, and his willingness to use the entire Globe, bring actors to every part of the pit. The mainly young audience becomes drawn into Richard's machinations, cheering his highly amusing (in this instance) claim to become king.

Richard is not the only villain here. Kyle's production brings out treachery in almost every character, emphasising Shakespeare's point that England had the monarchy it deserved, a weak and whining aristocracy, a craven and grasping Church, and an incurious and greedy populace. Among this lot, Richard fits in nicely.

There are a couple of other outstanding performances, too—among the women playing women. Linda Bassett's frighteningly powerful Queen Margaret thunders her curses at the diminutive Richard. And Meredith MacNeill is an interesting choice for Lady Anne, whom she plays as a daft woman who doesn't have a clue what she's doing when she accepts the proposal of the repulsive Richard over the body of her dead husband.

This Richard III asks whether the king is inherently evil, or just the intelligent but warped product of an unloved and unloving family.