Richard III Trafalgar Studios

Saying that Martin Freeman’s Richard III perfectly captures the banality of evil may sound like damning the everybloke actor with faint praise. But this is a clever interpretation of Shakespeare’s ultimate bad guy. London’s last two major Richards were Mark Rylance, the most original actor of his generation, and Kevin Spacey, the most charismatic. Freeman isn’t either of those things, but in Jamie Lloyd’s production, he smartly plays to his strengths while deftly puncturing his nice guy image. Lloyd’s trim, lucid Richard is set in January 1979, aka the Winter of Discontent, which has the effect of turning the play’s famous opening line into a reasonably good joke. Beyond that, this production’s claustrophobic beige, brown and blood-soaked netherworld is more evocative of the USSR at the height of Stalin’s Terror than Britain’s difficult ’70s.