Richard III review – Martin Freeman is a contained and cautious king

The warnings about Richard III were misleading. The only sonic disturbance I was aware of on press night came when British Gas texted me a quarter of an hour into the show. The theatre was not crammed with Hobbit and Sherlock fans clapping Martin Freeman at the end of each speech. In any case, surely clapping is better than pudding-like inertia. Nor is Jamie Lloyd’s production completely drenched in blood. True, some young women near the front were shrewdly supplied with Trafalgar Studios T-shirts to protect them from spattered gore. But a few rows back the bloodiness was pretty much par for the Shakespearean course: one dripping severed head, some slimily incarnadined hands and several lacerated bodies. Other warnings might have been issued. These would concern imposing a complicated back-story on an already knotted plot. In line with the theatre’s policy of bringing “politically charged, socially conscious” theatre to the West End, Lloyd has updated the action to late 70s England. Soutra Gilmour’s design shows an office conference room with spider plants and Anglepoise lamps. Military and civilian personnel yell at each other, sometimes through mics. There is strangulation by telephone cord, demand for oxygen cylinders, and electrical sizzling noise. Almost as long as any soliloquy is the grunting grapple over a desk as Richard kills off another unwanted wife.