Re Arifa Akbar’s article (We go to the theatre to feel something – and people do. Trigger warnings don’t stop that, 22 February), in 2016, I attended a performance of Shakespeare’s Richard III in London. Ralph Fiennes was in the titular role, and Vanessa Redgrave played Queen Margaret. I was thrilled to see them both in person on stage.
I was not unfamiliar with the play, having read it and seen it performed multiple times, and this production’s opening scene with the exhumation of the king’s skeleton and twisted spine, a nod to the recent discovery of the remains in a Leicestershire car park, set the tone of brutality and industrial sparseness appropriate to this contemporary staging of the play.
