About

My blog has quite a lot of posts about Samuel West (Julius Caesar, On Chesil Beach and Darkest Hour) and Charles Edwards (My Fair Lady Australian tour and Henry IX).

Sunday, 2 August 2015

Charles Edwards - Richard II

Charles plays the title role in Richard II at The Globe until 18 October.

The production is also in the 2016 Globe on Screen season, which will be screened in selected cinemas internationally (The Globe press office).

This media round up contains review excerpts, links to interviews with Charles and an updated Storify.

Reviews

John Morrison
"The test of any actor in this role is how he handles the transformation from powerful inhuman monarch to terrified human prisoner at the end of the play, and Edwards meets this challenge magnificently."

The Guardian
"a highly accomplished performance and movingly graduates into tragedy in the final act."

Evening Standard
"he sensitively conveys Richard’s descent from arrogant mockery — when he banishes his cousin Bolingbroke and the obstinate Duke of Norfolk — into an inept vulnerability that contrasts with Bolingbroke’s shrewdness and populism."

Official London Theatre
"The wonderful Charles Edwards, who deserves to be a household name he’s so regularly brilliant, again delivers a sterling performance. He creates a childish Richard with a jaunty arrogance and the absolute confidence of entitlement that is briefly disturbed in ripples to reveal non-regal frailty."

The Times (24 July)
"as the gilded monarch presiding over an England hurtling towards bankruptcy and insurrection,
Charles Edwards is wholly absorbing, dangerously convinced that he was born to rule and besotted with his own glittering, hollow majesty."

The Independent
"Charles Edwards’s excellent Richard ... the actor portrays the king as effete but not effeminate and brings a lovely light touch to the black comedy of Richard’s blithe self-centredness."

The Stage
"His is a compelling performance. He is confident of his status, ermined and purpled as he is, yet also deeply consciousness of the way the world views him; when he crouches on the ground to talk about the death of kings, he makes himself small, vulnerable, revealing something of the man beneath."

whatsonstage
"Edwards, a really fine actor, now proves himself a great one: his Richard describes, more acidly and more exactly than any Richard since the great Ian Richardson/Richard Pascoe alternating pairing of the king and Bolingbroke, his journey into self-knowledge without self-pity or weepiness."

Time Out
"Edwards’s performance as Shakespeare’s doomed monarch is about as close to down to earth as it gets.it’s a heartbreaking moment when Richard is overcome when a wooden toy held by the little king at the start of his life is reintroduced to the grown man toward the end. A human and entertaining night of tragedy."

Pictures
From rehearsals (Official London Theatre)

Interviews
Radio 2 Arts Show with Claudia Winkleman - this is available on iPlayer for 3 more weeks
"His Royal Ascent", The Sunday Times, 26 July
The Globe - audio interviews from rehearsals

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