Richard III at the Satiricon

I’m about to make the shallowest comment ever. It probably means I should not be a dramaturg. So prepare yourself.

Seeing Shakespeare in Russian and not having to worry about the language was both liberating and kind of awesome. It totally took the pressure off of trying to decode the Elizabethan way of speaking and his wordplay. I think I may have gotten more out of Richard III in Russian than I have from any other Shakespearean production I’ve ever seen.

After spending all day every day working on theatre, on Tuesday night I was amped to finally go watch theatre. While my classmates had already seen three productions, Richard III was my first show in Moscow (other than Alice, of course). Because of the repertory system, productions will often run for years at a time, with as much as a month between performances. However, this all means that certain shows were seen by friends in the program three years ago, and Richard III came with universal high praise. I was a bit nervous about going to see a show with such high expectations, but I was not disappointed.

The most intriguing aspect of the production for me was how they interpreted the different killings. It was a visually stunning and creative piece, never literal. For instance, instead of drowning Clarence in a vat of wine, the two murderers take turns pouring wine into their respective glasses and then violently tossing it on him. This was set to an intense, swelling score, and interesting music choices enhanced many sections of the play. Later, the two princes have a pillow fight and when their killers come in, the pillow fight turns into them being killed via the pillows thrown repeatedly.

There was a recurring physical motif after each murder. The killer would somehow wrap up the body and then drag it offstage. At one point Richard himself took the sheet-like material covering the entirety of the large stage, and rolling it up dragged it himself offstage. It was as if this action symbolized how he was the one really killing all of those people, even though it wasn’t by his own hand.

The actor playing Richard, Konstantin Rhaikin, is truly amazing. It may be cliché to say he was completely transformed, but he was. He managed to bring humor and illustrate the comedic, if horrific, elements of his character’s actions.

I think we’re going to see at least two or three more shows directed by Richard III’s director, Yuri Butusov, and I’m really excited. Yesterday in the cafeteria at MXAT Joe and I ran into Tolya (Anatoly Smeliansky, dean of the MXAT school and associate artistic director of MXAT) and wound up sitting with him for lunch. He pointed at a man sitting by himself nearby. “That’s Yuri Butusov, the director of Richard III,” he said. A little in awe, we sat there as Tolya called out to him and chatted with him a bit. We figured out that he was telling him who we were and that we just saw his show. It was one of those times I really regretted not knowing the Russian language better so I could do more than smile and nod.