Richard III (or almost) – Emu Productions

Overview

Australian playwright Timothy Daly is a queen-maker. His Kafka Dances in 1993 was one of Cate Blanchett's first roles and won her the Rosemount Newcomer Award, and it's still regarded as a classic. His work is frequently performed overseas, though not so much at home, possibly because it’s a bit bonkers in that way that Europeans are more open to.

In his new play Richard III (or almost), directed by Markus Weber, two prisoners (played by fit veteran thesps Gerry Sont and Lucas Connelly) are locked in a room where they are punished by having to perform bouts of Shakespeare's Richard III whenever a bell chimes. Why? By whom? What for? Daly chooses not to make it entirely clear. Instead, his play is mainly an abstract, dystopic meditation on how governments deal with art and how artists view themselves.

It's not something you often think about, but theatre reviews are not written (nor plays made, for that matter) in a silo; they are in conversation with other theatre productions going on within view. Certain styles and aesthetics become the norm in a city, if not a country. So when something comes along that sits completely outside of that conversation, it's a little hard to know how to treat it. Richard III (or almost), the product of both an Australian writer and Australian director who have spent their working lives in Europe, is just such a mysterious outlier.

It was apparently well received at its debut at the prestigious Avignon Festival in France, but in Sydney it seems, for want of a better word, weird. The resistance to plot, character and convention isn't total, but it is strong. I was happy to accept its abstract set-up, but then the second half seems to turn on quite a straight-up crime mystery, which doesn't wholly relate to what came before. However, the shifts in power between the two characters were a constant source of intrigue.

Richard III (or almost) won't be to everyone's taste, but as a mission statement from Emu Productions, the new owners and resident company of King Street Theatre, it is compelling. It's exciting to think that they might shine a light on performance possibilities mostly unseen in Sydney. Good luck to them.

Student? Get your $20 student rush tickets 30 minutes before the show nightly.