![Ayesha Dharker as Aumerle, Adjoa Andoh as Richard II and Leila Farzad as Queen](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/theatre/2019/03/08/TELEMMGLPICT000190569132_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqripIwMdL4w3kwKXkts0iWm4p3pyLte8UZsPZkBGtxUA.jpeg?imwidth=680)
Richard II, Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, review: the Globe makes history with this first ever all-female, all-BAME Shakespeare
![Ayesha Dharker as Aumerle, Adjoa Andoh as Richard II and Leila Farzad as Queen](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/theatre/2019/03/08/TELEMMGLPICT000190569132_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqripIwMdL4w3kwKXkts0iWm4p3pyLte8UZsPZkBGtxUA.jpeg?imwidth=680)
The mission at Shakespeare’s Globe under Michelle Terry is at once eye-catching, the height of political correctness and commonsensical: the aim to ensure that those staging Shakespeare are drawn from the diverse society we’re now living in. That means accepting women playing men – and, as in the Bard’s day, vice versa – the inclusion of many ethnicities and those who might be termed “differently abled”.
Other major companies – the RSC included – are moving in a similar direction, in line with a wider push in the media, TV and film to create a more inclusive model of representation, in performance and production. But the Globe has made history here: this revival of Richard II – which stars Adjoa Andoh, co-directing alongside Lynette Linton (new artistic director at the Bush) – is “directed, designed and performed by the first-ever company of women of colour in a Shakespeare play on a major UK stage”.
On the opening night, I was greeted in passing by Jatinda Verma, who set up the UK’s first Asian theatre company, Tara Arts, in 1977, in the midst of race riots and open prejudice. There can be no denying it has taken a long time for theatre to open its doors to all-comers. When Andoh explains in the programme that “People of colour, and women, are always at the bottom of the heap, so women of colour get to tell that story [Richard II]”, I think it would be churlish to quarrel with that demand. The roll-call of Richards includes Gielgud, Scofield, McKellen, Spacey, Redmayne and Tennant – and at the Globe Rylance – with Fiona Shaw the odd-woman-out at the National in 1995. It’s Andoh’s turn now.
If I have some misgivings, they’re less to do with the production – which, much textually pruned and galloping grippingly apace, proves remarkably straightforward and insightful – as the kind of combative language that surrounds its bold statement of ownership. Also in the programme we find the author Bernardine Evaristo talking about “the theatrical ‘establishment’” as “the patriarchal hegemony in all but name”. Coming shortly after the artistic director of the Kiln, Kilburn, Indhu Rubasingham denounced the dominance of white men, “generally over 50”, in the critical community; my concern is that the benign mission to enlarge the theatre-going and -making realm is becoming allied to the hostile rhetoric of contempt and identity-political exclusion.
Aside from some notable innovations – the stage-wall has been clad by a woody frontage, the auditorium festooned with photographs of the cast’s female forebears, and the company arrives to a drum-accompanied chorus of chants – it’s the fidelity and clarity of the evening that stands out, in welcome contrast to the hectic muddle of the Almeida production.
![Sarah Niles as Bolingbroke](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/theatre/2019/03/08/TELEMMGLPICT000190569140_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqDhV2K8uQsCbKQWf5axWl7sryc4hMXEz3fVp-mdia28w.jpeg?imwidth=350)
We’re promised “a post-Empire reflection on what it means to be British in the light of the Windrush anniversary and as we leave the European Union”, but much of that implied topicality comes from the audience, who did (on press night) duly greet John of Gaunt’s line – “England, that was wont to conquer others, hath made a shameful conquest of itself” – with a Brexit-based laugh.
A gorgeously attired Andoh makes for a fleet, formidable Richard; it’s a physically commanding performance that would be more brilliant still if applied to Henry V rather than this capricious, vacillating monarch. But she has a clownishness that well suits Richard’s taunting confrontations with Sarah Niles’ usurping Bolingbroke and she fully registers the sadness, dismay and release of defeat and deposition. All the speeches hit home, the final soliloquy filled with indignant passion at wasted time and as for that line “Thus play I in one person many people” – who can deny it carries a revitalised emphasis?
Until April 21. Tickets: 020 7401 9919; shakespearesglobe.com