Richard III
Opening Night: October 11, 2017
Closing: October 14, 2017
Theater: BAM Harvey Theater
Dragging his clubfoot and hunchback across a clay- and glitter-caked stage, Shakespeare’s most wretched villain weaponizes his ugliness against a kingdom ravaged by its own elite infighting. In this prescient production, German director Thomas Ostermeier (An Enemy of the People, 2013 Next Wave) laces iambic pentameter with relentless drumming, bringing his trademark pop-cultural canniness to bear. Cult Shakespearean actor Lars Eidinger is cast as a kind of rock-star despot, growling his soliloquies into a microphone that swings overhead like the Sword of Damocles, as he alternately seduces and bombasts his nation into chaos.
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October 12, 2017
An unhinged nation gets the unhinged leader it deserves.
This nasty but tidy political equation pulses in every molecule of Thomas Ostermeier’s stunning production of Shakespeare’s “Richard III,” which runs through Saturday as part of the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave Festival. As dark jokes go, that one may not be your first choice as the basis for an evening’s entertainment, given the ways of the world these days.
But this production from Schaubühne Berlin, which fills the Harvey Theater with the pervasiveness of a slimy fog, could provide just the catharsis you need right now. After all, it’s the month of Halloween, when people find release in celebrating what scares them, laughing and shrieking in one breath.
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