"These coherently interpreted characters do not add up to a coherent interpretation of the play, which wobbles between shouty polemics and a kind of Tudor snark."
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"when Richard steps out into the audience and explains away his wrongdoings, we listen, enraptured, and applaud on cue. It's the most clever bit of staging in this nearly 3-hour production, which doesn't shed much new light on the 600-year-old play, but is well designed and provides a worthy talent showcase for its actors."
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"It’s certainly a funny tragedy, full of snide asides from the sociopath at its center, but it’s about as breezy as a tornado. The English duke Richard, through trickery and force, rolls like a juggernaut through his own family, murdering right and left, just to reach the crown....Robert O’Hara’s production has ideas — but it is not rich in those other things, and it lets our focus waver."
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"Happily for audiences, if not for the many characters who fall victim to his machinations like ninepins, Richard is onstage almost all the time. Ms. Gurira’s performance makes a memorable case for the benefits of nontraditional casting."
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"The play concludes with order restored and the agent of chaos removed; the audience stumbles into the night, the spell of Gurira’s charisma and Richard’s ambition broken, wondering what it is that Shakespeare’s England, and we, just lived through."
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"The young Prince of Wales and Duke of York wear glitter sneakers. Those shiny shoes exemplify the primary problem of this production: So much is going on, yet so little is going on."
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"Admittedly, not all these disparate-sounding choices add up, and those of us searching for the why in O'Hara's staging will probably come up empty-handed. But I found this 'Richard III' properly thrilling. My kingdom for more nights like that."
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We've had some great productions of Richard III in recent years, along with some really terrible ones, but none have been as conflicted as Robert O'Hara's staging at the Delacorte. It's a mass of warring impulses, both high-concept and deeply conventional, eager to make a statement but lacking anything meaningful to say. A handful of strong supporting performers do their best to keep this rudderless ship on course, but nobody should have to work that hard, not on a warm summer's night in Central Park.
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