RICHARD II Comes to Det KGL. Teater This Week

Richard II comes to Det KGL. Teater, playing through 29 October.

Shakespeare’s Richard II is unfit to rule, although supreme in acting the role of monarch. He is capricious, omnipotent, self-indulgent, wasteful and buys himself friendships, all while the public coffers are drained. The king further provokes the nobles’ ire when he exacts new taxes from them, as a result of delusive advisers having incited him to wage a futile war against the Irish.

In the absence of effective rule, friends become enemies, yet in his downfall, Richard realises his own inadequate pretence. Short-circuiting the power game, the king proves himself with poetic eloquence to be a humanist at heart nonetheless. But alas, all too late ... Olaf Johannessen in the title role as Richard II is surrounded by a commanding cast of eight men who embody the many roles of friends and enemies in this blistering tragicomedy of power.

Director Staffan Valdemar Holm and set designer Bente Lykke Møller have with great success staged the Royal Danish Theatre’s production of Richard III, Shakespeare’s most famous royal drama about the end of the bloody civil war, aka the Wars of the Roses. Now, this award-winning artistic team has challenged themselves to stage Richard II, which takes place 100 years earlier and ushers in the Wars of the Roses.

Richard II is performed in Danish.

Strobe lights are used in the performance.

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