Setwise, the look I'm going for with this Richard III: The Terrible Reign set is stark, clinical, and sterile with an undertone of evil. In the adaptation Richard has nearly a dozen people killed during the course of the play, and the word "blood" (or "bloody") occurs over 40 times. That repetition and Richard's brutal actions got me thinking about what metaphor best embodied his character. (The biblical "whited sepulchre" came to mind; however, that image wouldn't transfer well to stage.) In the end, I was inspired by research of old morgues and slaughterhouses. Morgues appear scrupulously clean but are in reality gruesome and sometimes grotesque. Slaughterhouses do a bloody business but can be hosed down and almost all evidence of what's happened there eliminated. I see that as befitting Shakespeare's Richard (who is likely not much like the historical Richard). Richard is all courtesy and polish outwardly but greed, envy, and wickedness inside. Richard has his relatives and "friends" mercilessly murdered but tidies up the business as if nothing untoward has happened—the supreme example being his wooing of Lady Anne over her husband's murdered corpse. (PURIST ALERT: I've done the unpardonable in this adaptation and changed the identity of the corpse from Anne's father-in-law, King Henry VI, to her husband, Edward. Richard killed both. Every time I've ever seen this play on stage or screen, I think that's who it should be, so I changed it.) Our set looks clean but very black—just like Richard. The shiny surface will also reflect light well—especially red light, reinforcing the major theme of blood.
No comments:
Post a Comment