Determined to Prove a Villain

As we prepare for the Flatwater Shakespeare Company production of Richard III, with Brad Boesen in the title role, let’s see how other actors have opened the play as Shakespeare’s best-loved villain.

This YouTube post –

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GumLGIKT-Ak&feature=related

– presents three Richards and their initial soliloquies.

Ron Cook appears in a BBC television production, directed by Jane Howell in 1983. This version followed the three plays about King Henry VI and used the same actors throughout – revealing how Richard emerges from the chaos of civil war.

Jonathan Slinger (seen above) is in rehearsal for a Royal Shakespeare Company production in 2007, directed by Michael Boyd, which was reprised as part of a Histories season at Stratford and London in Spring 2008 – presenting both of Shakespeare’s tetralogies (four-play sequences) in repertory.

Ian McKellen recreates his performance in the 1990 Royal National Theatre production, directed by Richard Eyre, for this 1995 film version directed by Richard Loncraine (from a screenplay by McKellen himself).