From a hole in the stage, a voice bellows: “Where are my boots?” History (personified by Tom Kanji) is aghast at the sound. He is here, in a Leicester car park, to record the discovery of the body of a “hunchbacked” medieval king. Richard III (Kyle Rowe) rises from his grave, dazed but pugnacious. When History reveals to him that he is viewed today as the very type of a wicked villain, an appalled Richard demands they re-examine the record of his life. What follows is full of sound and fury (as if to echo History’s assertion that history, with a small “h”, is written by he who shouts loudest), confrontational dialogue punctuated by catch-line humour (Laura Smithers’s nakedly ambitious, although gorgeously gowned Margaret repeatedly insisting that her son is “one thirty-two-th” royal blood – he will defeat Richard to be crowned Henry VII).
Where Shakespeare used Richard to explore moral questions of good and evil, Philippa Gregory’s Richard, My Richard aims to align him more closely with “historical truth”. In the first half, over a staccato sequence of scenes, her straight-backed, Yorkshire-accented king denies killing his uncle; proclaims loyalty to his brother, Edward (Matt Concannon); shows his love for his wife, Anne (Tori Burgess); and is eager to discover from History the fate of the two young princes in the Tower. He would do better to ask Anne or Margaret.
