OK, so what does a director do when she has a historical character whose persona is so ingrained in the public imagination that no matter what the actual history says, the average audience member brings to the performance an image that creates (and sometimes overpowers) what she finds on stage. The classic example is the historical Richard, Duke of Gloucester, and the hatchet-job Willy Shakes did in Richard III. A king known for legal reform that helped the common man, the historical Richard suffered from scoliosis but did not appear deformed. Shakespeare’s Richard, however, is a hunchbacked, withered-armed, limping personification of evil. And that dictates the kind of Richard we continue to get on stage.
Why do I bring this up?
We face the same problem in this play with the distaff half of Antony and Cleopatra.
Continue reading “When Dickey met Cleo”