Michael Boyd s brilliant direction with imaginative color-blind casting is yet another. Desperate political infighting during the bloody 15th-century War of the Roses provided Shakespeare with plenty of dramatic material. After mountains of arguments, lies, backstabbing friends, plotting wives, failed allegiances, splintered conspiracies, fights, murders, battles, exiles, and ghosts enough to populate a large Yorkshire village, England s political squabbling comes to an end with the ascendancy of Henry Tudor, signaling the beginning of the English Renaissance. In the hands of the RSC, the ride is as historically clear as it is staggeringly theatrical. Performed in the round, the production is marked by continuous movement.
Scenes swiftly blend into one another.
With one major set piece, Hell s Mouth, a huge metal bunker with two heavy doors and a lookout tower for ghosts and watchmen, designer Tom Piper s stage seems both bare and Boschian. Lighting designer Heather Carson enlivens the space with cold, warm, flickering, and threatening light throughout. Boyd uses side balconies, audience aisles even overhead gantries for entrances and exits. At one point Jack Cade s peasant rebellion explodes overhead, with actors dangling from ropes while the Lancastrians crawl forward on their bellies in the midst of civil war. Joan of Arc burns at the stake and is lowered through a smoldering trap door.