Front Row Reviewers

Oct 30, 2021 | Reviews

For a Bloody Good Time Go See Grassroots Shakespeare Company’s Richard III Haunting a Computer Near You

Front Row Reviewers

Front Row Reviewers

By patchpocketprofessor   

                

Richard III from Grassroots Shakespeare Company (GSC) is back to haunt your Internet, and if you let them, your Facebook (as if you weren’t finding enough there to scare you already).

This 80-minute production is a convincingly spooky rendition of Shakespeare’s best-known villain streaming from somewhere in one of Provo’s darkest vaults. You can get tickets online https://grassrootsshakespeare.com/ or follow the link on Facebook here, https://www.facebook.com/GrassrootsShakespeare/

As perennially loyal fans of the Grassroots Shakespeare Company know, these actors put together all elements of the play; the costumes, the music, the movement, the chill and the thrill, all on their own without a director. This is just like how the Kingsman in the original productions presented it to the high and low Elizabethans of the period. And as they did in the day, live musicians play just offscreen providing excellent atmosphere, underscoring the entire production.

If you are hesitant to watch live streaming events, especially plays, GSC’s production should help to cure you of that. This is no zoom meeting. The cameras give us three points of view along with a follow cam that not only shows us the fully framed stage, but also skews the angles of our close-ups (slightly off-balance vision). The cast may have rehearsed the play without a director, but the filming of the production shows some experienced guidance. Also enhancing the visuals is the clever costuming. There’s finery, and pomp, and the rustic garb of battle. Most memorably, the cast made innovative use of masking and puppetry, doubling the threat of a murderer and haunting Richard’s nightmares with a gaggle of mini ghosts.  Who says ghouls can’t be cute?

The tone of GSC’s iteration of Richard III is downright gleeful. Just eight actors fill in a baker’s dozen (a murderers’ row?) – or maybe a score or two – of roles bending genders and making snide asides to an unseen but vocally engaged audience off camera. And as ever, Grassroots encourages possible audience involvement. Interaction can provide some of the best moments in entertainment. Consider this: when Richard first appears with the stolen crown on his head, a game member of the audience shouts, “It looked better on the other guy!”  The actor’s reaction to the heckling drew from me a startled laugh; Richard flips him off.

In the titular role, Davey Morrison drags his stump through the battles, both political and bloody, in red-framed glasses and pointed coattails. It is this performance that seals the production’s narrative and cohesiveness. The “unfinished” Richard in Morrison’s performance is deftly polished and knows himself and his role with a satisfying thoroughness.

Richard’s main rival, Richmond, is played by Daisy Sherman, with an eagerness matching Richard’s crookedness of mind and body. Especially effective are Richard’s hired assassins; Sol as Catesby is cool and smooth, and Drake as Buckingham slinks menacingly in fine while in fiendish accouterment.

There’s never a lack of enthusiasm on the part of the Grassroots Shakespeare Company.  Log in a few minutes early for the pre-show – a musical, nihilistic appetizer with sinking ships, gallons of blood, an accordion, and a guitar or two. Indeed, for this interlude, “God’s away on business” a rope-skipping singer sets the tone confessing that “sometimes I give myself the creeps.” Creep on over to your closest Devil’s plaything, er, I mean, Internet device, and log into this bloody domain of real and delightful frights. 


Grassroots Shakespeare Company presents Richard III by William Shakespeare
This event is online
Streaming: https://grassrootsshakespeare.com/
Ticket Cost: $10
Phone: 707-722-7529
Email: bard@grassrootsshakespeare.com
Get tickets here for the virtual show:
https://www.simpletix.com/e/richard-iii-tickets-80595
performing on 10/22, 10/23, 10/29, 10/30 @ 7:30pm.  You’ll be emailed the link the day of your show.

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