Arthur Hughes is the first disabled actor to play Shakespeare’s supervillain for the RSC. While the text ties the “rudely stamp’d” character’s evil nature to his “deformity”, Gregory Doran’s production goes some way to correcting that false equivalence. This Richard is an ambitious amoralist, not exaggeratedly hunched and limping in the Laurence Olivier mould.
As the rapacious Duke of Gloucester, Hughes is a handsome, swaggering sociopath aware of his effect on the trembling Lady Anne (Rosie Sheehy, excellent) whom he woos by the grave of Henry VI, her father-in-law whom he killed along with her husband. He is aware, too, of how he bewitches his posse on his machiavellian rise to power.
