Richard III

It was good to read the lukewarm review of the Public Theater’s Richard III in today’s Times, if only because we were too late to get tickets to the sold out run.

And let’s be clear about why people wanted to see this production — the silly publicity photos gave the impression that the production’s main draw was the spectacle of 4 foot 5 inch Peter Dinklage — last seen in the cult hit The Station Agent — playing Richard III. Ben Brantley’s review sketches the scene:

Ascending the throne has never been more of a struggle for the title character of “Richard III” than it is in the production that opened last night at the Public Theater. This is not a metaphor. Peter Dinklage, who is portraying Shakespeare’s most villainous monarch, is 4-foot-5, and the throne of England was obviously designed for a taller king.

Brantley comes close — this close — to saying what we were thinking:

Mr. Dinklage’s size and silence in [The Station Agent] registered as an artful and natural expression of an outsider’s isolation, a mirror for feelings of the other major characters. So it made a certain immediate sense when it was learned that Mr. Dinklage would play Shakespeare’s old crookback, a man doomed from birth by physical appearance to regard himself as a misfit.

Of course, the casting also smacked faintly of a publicity-luring stunt, of another offbeat star du jour turning up his limelight via the stage.

Bottom line seems to be that Dinklage was generally good as Richard III but that the production wasn’t so good. Terms like “overheated amateurishness” and “embarrassing” are thrown around. Your sense of Ticket Schadenfreude* is preserved.

* “Ticket Schadenfreude” is loosely defined as the sense of satisfaction one feels after finding out that a sold-out show isn’t really worth seeing.