With The Tragedy of King Richard the Third, his third play, Shakespeare made the scene as a playwright with the first hit of his career and one of his most popular ever since.  Now, as we rehearse, I am struck by the energy, the vigor and the apparent delight in the writing.  In this story and in its central character, he had found his voice, and as each scene unfolds, I find myself imagining that young guy hunched over a table furiously scratching out the dialogue.  I imagine him laughing to himself at the moments I catch myself laughing along.  The exuberance in the telling is thrilling-the laments are operatic, the curses are deliciously vile, the intrigues and backstabbing are sudden and violent, the forward momentum is relentless.

And the themes emerge that will recur and be sharpened again and again in Othello, Hamlet, Macbeth: the corrupting influence of power, the struggle to govern justly, the frailty of the governed, the rising tide of violence that swells unchecked once it's loosed, the perniciousness of lies and the consequence of evil in the human sphere.

As much as any of these, and for all of its outrageousness and dark humor and almost soap-opera-sized family
melodramatics (which I love it for), at its heart I hear a dire warning.  Through the course of the play, many—if not all—of its characters confront a moment where they must make a decision that violates their conscience in exchange for a piece of power, influence, satisfaction.  For some, the trade seems so small as to be almost trivial; others stake huge bets against their better natures. In accumulation, though, the world changes.  Freedoms are swiftly curtailed, heads are lost, families demolished, and trepidation triumphs.  Amidst the gleeful gore and sensational unfolding of this thriller of a story, this note in the play feels almost hauntingly appropriate and anticipatory to our modern day.

Matthew Arbour, Director