The Theater: Old Play in Manhattan, Feb. 21, 1949

Richard III (by William Shakespeare; produced by Herman Levin) is one of Shakespeare’s poorer plays but plushier stage pieces. So incessantly and ostentatiously villainous is the deformed, usurping Richard that down the centuries the role has been a temptation for every gaudy actor and a triumph for a number of good ones.

Richard III is prentice Shakespeare (some have argued that it is not all his) and in it the early Bard catches only the surfaces of evil. But he gives Richard two thoroughly vivid characteristics: a malign, gloating wit and a flamboyant love of effect. The role is an actor’s dream because Richard is himself forever acting—throwing not a dark veil but a bright light round his hypocrisies, welcoming, not wincing at his bloody crimes. Seldom has there been such joy of villainy.

Seldom, either, has there been such monotony of murder. The one-man reign of terror that ends with Richard’s death on Bosworth Field not only demotes the play from tragedy to melodrama; it eventually gives horror the colorlessness of habit. Toward the end, Shakespeare’s Richard III is very nearly as bad as Shakespeare’s Richard.

Last week’s production accepted, indeed courted, Richard as melodrama. Everything was painted in bold primary colors; a good deal was literally bathed in baleful crimson light. But the thing had pace and a certain crude excitement, and Richard Whorf’s usurper, limping of foot and swift of brain, was enjoyably malign. There was nothing subtle about any of it, and toward the end there was much that was strident; but if never anything more, it was a pretty good show.