Q&A: EDINBURGH 2024: Lexi Wolfe on AFTER SHAKESPEARE: RICHARD III

BWW caught up with Lexi Wolfe about bringing After Shakespeare: Richard III to the 2024 Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

How did you first get involved in the world of theatre?

I've wanted to perform all my life, and after I got my Master’s at LIPA [Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts], I moved to London . . . And promptly got seen for very little, or as women who had very little substance to them. It was frustrating, to say the least, so I turned to creating my own work at last. Once I'd gotten an award or two for some of my one-woman shows, I only then started to realise that I could do this, regardless of whether or not someone on the other end of the phone was saying “Yes” to me or not. I also got a tremendous kick out of making my own work and having my own voice in a theatre space. As per this show, a lot of them have been history-based, but I've also made a few other things for fun - folk-story based or even about the women in Sherlock Holmes' life, that kind of thing.

Can you tell us a bit about your show, After Shakespeare: Richard III?

I've been meaning to write a better version of Richard's story for almost ten years now, but I finally managed it earlier this year. It encapsulates much of Richard's life. He reigned for only two years, but I go right back to when he was a pre-teen so you see a lot more of who he was when he was a young man, right through until after he became king. It's very different from Shakespeare's interpretation. You can expect to be surprised several times, if not the whole way through. That isn't for shock factor - it's because it's about time a more sympathetic story was told.

What was the creative process like for After Shakespeare: Richard III?

The main thing was getting the research done so that everything that went into the show was either complete fact or interpretable through things we knew to have happened. I had to really balance the artistic licence against what all sources I could find would tell me. Discerning the bias in sources has been a real labour of love, and then balancing character development against the tremendous amount of exposition needed has kept me editing until . . . Well, yesterday, as it happens. The chap playing Richard, Adam Phelan, has been phenomenal and really brought him to life. I'm so glad he's turned out to be such a good casting because I act opposite him playing literally everyone else - Lady Anne, King Edward, The Duke of Buckingham . . . It's been almost as exhausting as it has been exciting getting it up on its feet.

What is it like bringing After Shakespeare: Richard III to the Edinburgh Fringe?

Well, I came last year with After Shakespeare and it was mainly because that did better than we expected - we would've been happy to have broken even, but we sold in the region of 70% of our tickets and got some fabulous reviews - that we decided to return again this year. It was also a challenge for me. I knew I wanted to finish this dratted play I had figured out in my mind, so as soon as we let theSpace know we were returning, I had a deadline which helped me get on with further research and stressing about the fact I now had to have something, that I had to believe was at least good enough. So it's been nerve-wracking, but I'm so glad we've got the thing here.

How do you balance not only the real-life history of Richard III but Shakespeare’s interpretation and your own as well?

Funny you ask that - I don't balance Shakespeare's interpretation at all. I think it's been perpetuated too much, and not only is it taken out of context - it's thought that the story was more a contemporary poke at Elizabeth I & James I's Secretary of State, Robert Cecil, who shared Richard's scoliosis condition - but it's ill-informed an awful lot of people about the kind of person Richard was. You also have to remember Shakespeare likely got most of his ideas about Richard from Thomas Moore's account, and don't even get me started on the holes you can poke in that . . . Shakespeare set Richard up as his villain by having him kill someone on a battlefield when he would, in real life, have been about two years old. When you look at a lot of the facts, stripped bare, that we know about Richard, you suddenly find a man who it seems increasingly hard to think was capable of murdering children . . . He'd be far more likely to be overseeing the execution of such a man than to be that man himself. Yet history is written by the victors.

What is it about Shakespeare’s work that you think still draws audiences to it?

With Richard III specifically? Like most of Shakespeare's work, historical inaccuracies aside, it's a wonderful show about a man who is a villain for the sake of being a villain. It's fun to watch. The message always is that karma comes back to get you in the end, and audiences always love a caricature. The rest of his work is beautiful and does what any work that survives the test of time needs to do: it is a dramatic study of human nature and emotions. No matter the language, you can follow it and enjoy it at any age. 

What do you hope audiences take away from After Shakespeare: Richard III?

What I would love is to make people question their ideas about Richard III. I want them to go away and undertake their own research, come to their own conclusions and, if nothing else Richard-centric, remind them not to always take at face value the stories they hear without knowing where information has come from. There is so much bias in the world just now, and far too few people questioning anything beyond their own feelings on a subject. But yeah - I hope they appreciate hearing about who this supposed villain may have actually been. I'm still conjecturing stuff here based on what I've found out, but it's likely more accurate than anything they probably believe already.

How would you describe After Shakespeare: Richard III in one word?

Unexpected.

After Shakespeare: Richard III runs from 2 to 24 August (no performance on 11 August) at theSpaceTriplex - Studio at the 2024 Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

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