This production, tracing the rise and fall of Shakespeare’s “rudely stamp’d” antihero, follows Adjoa Andoh’s blazing performance as Richard II four years ago in a feted re-envisioning. This has all the markings of a similarly maverick reimagining, set in the heart of the Cotswolds countryside, characters sporting broad accents, with no courtly pomp in sight.
It is also clearly a passion project steered by Andoh. Where Richard II was co-directed by Andoh and Lynette Linton, here she solely directs and stars as the Duke of Gloucester. In the programme, Andoh speaks of growing up in the Cotswolds, isolated amid the prevailingly white community around her. That idea seems extended to the figure of Richard and to the play as a whole, which is billed as an examination of race and trauma.
