Richard II at BAM Harvey Theater

Richard II: ruler by divine right, undone through bumbling mortal wrongs. Director Gregory Doran leads the Royal Shakespeare Company in this masterful take on Shakespeare’s incisive study of squandered sovereignty, the first chapter in the epic cycle King and Country. Video projections, cast onto shimmering curtains, animate a kingly domicile that slowly decomposes alongside Richard’s waning authority. The revelatory David Tennant (Doctor Who, Broadchurch, Hamlet) makes his US stage debut as the ineffectual king, lending vulnerability to a man whose arbitrary exercises of power lead to his ultimate abdication.