King Richard IIis like a warm-up for King Lear — the study of a fall from grace and its accompaniment by a king’s delusions of grandeur and eventual cognizance of those delusions and of his diminishing supporters. His most insightful speeches come in throes of despair. Unlike his Hamlet, Melville’s Richard eventually swerves toward an agony that’s more harrowing than sarcastic, under Culliton’s direction, which makes this production absorbingly complicated and moving. There’s more pathos than glee in the fall of this sparrow. (The play depicts his murder, though some historians believe he starved himself to death while imprisoned.)
Culliton’s staging is a windblown affair, lucid yet with varying degrees of skill among the players, but anchored by Melville’s Richard, Douglas’ robust Bolingbroke and Maro Parian’s 14th-century chic costumes. But when the house lights come up, Gaunt’s lament lingers as an allegory for the plight of our generations to come: “This land of such dear souls .?.?. Dear for her reputation through the world, Is now leased out.”
Airs without heirs: Melville’s Richard and Queen Isabel (Andrea Gwynnel Morgan) (Photo by Dennis Lynch)
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Nick Dear is a contemporary English playwright who had the gall to write a historical play about the French, and it’s not even a musical. Power, premiered by London’s National Theatre in 2003 and now receiving its U.S. premiere by Burbank’s Theatre Banshee, studies King Louis XIV (Steve Coombs) and how his design of Versailles was a consequence more of vanity and petty jealousy than inspiration or vision. Though Louis is the centerpiece because he’s so famous, the drama charts the fall of the wealthiest man in France, Nicolas Fouquet (Matt Foyer), who’s not only an avid lover of luxury, owner of estates, art collector and bird trainer, he’s been subsidizing the royal family for some time. As is deeply vexing to the new King Louis. As in Richard II, the royals have bucketfuls of entitlement filled with more snobbery than cash.
Power studies Louis’ envy and eventual destruction of Fouquet, goaded by a rival, bean-counting courtier named Colbert (the fine Jason Tendell), all high blood pressure and contemptuousness for those who find enjoyment in life beyond balancing the books. They’ll bring down Fouquet on dubiously supportable charges of petty corruption, rather like the way Putin brings down oligarchs who piss him off. Fouquet’s main curse is that he has style, which the king envies. At a party, Fouquet dresses as “the sun.” As Fouquet later sits languishing in prison, Louis anoints himself as “the sun king,” after designing Versailles from Fouquet’s own garden.
With much focus on court intrigue over Louis’ affair with his gay brother’s wife (Lesley Kirsten Smith) and a mistress (Andra Carlson), Powerhas the titillating soap-operatic elements of so many Masterpiece Theatre histories. David Pavao turns in a gleefully stereotypical performance as Louis’ prancing, fashion-obsessed brother. His appearance is actually a highlight, though he has as little to do dramatically as he does politically.
“But Louis,” he protests when the king asks for his help, “I can’t actually doanything.”
I wish the stenciled French Court walls of Arthur MacBride’s set had been even half as ornate as Laura Brody’s sumptuous costumes, though the outdoor murals on the walls’ flip sides provide a wondrously theatrical atmosphere. Amid a strong ensemble, Casey Kramer’s manipulating regent Queen Anne and Foyer’s Fouquet have a potency that gives McKerrin Kelly’s direction its drive. There’s a look of quiet desperation in Foyer’s eyes, as he starts to comprehend his plunge, which is strikingly similar to Melville’s Richard II. It’s that moment of illusion shattered — for those with the gumption to have presumed that their view from the top of the world would never end.
KING RICHARD II | Written by WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE | Presented by INDEPENDENT SHAKESPEARE COMPANY in BARNSDALL ART PARK, SOUTH LAWN, 4800 Hollywood Blvd., Hlywd. | Through August 31 | (818) 710-6306
POWER | Written by NICK DEAR | Presented by THEATRE BANSHEE, 3435 W. Magnolia Blvd., Burbank | Through August 19 | (818) 846-5323
