Personally I think it may be best to start treating casting able-bodied actors in disabled roles in much the same way as casting white actors as black characters: You wouldn't do it unless you have a very good reason for it*. And in Elle While's production, there is certainly a logic applied.
In the final play of Shakespeare's tetralogy about the Wars of the Roses, the House of York has triumphed over the House of Lancaster. I always think this play - most often staged on its own - hits differently if seen in this context, and While tries to give some of that context in an opening action sequence of battles in which Terry's Dick - not the first time she's got it out - is a very central, bloody and underhanded figure. He opens the door for his brother Edward IV (Sarah Finigan) to secure the crown by murdering his predecessor, but what his family don't realise is that Richard's Main Character Energy means he won't be happy leaving it at that.
Richard is hated by many, but he's good enough at spotting people's grudges and weaknesses to set them against each other. It distracts the other powerful dukes enough that they've all been compromising themselves while he's been arranging a politically advantageous marriage for himself. By the time the ailing Edward dies, he's in pole position to have anyone who stands in his way executed on vague grounds of treason, while his right hand man Buckingham (Helen Schlesinger) has been spreading rumours about the two child princes who stand between Richard and the crown.
It's not just that Terry doesn't play Richard as having any physical disabilities - it's not quite a naturalistic performance but its eccentricities lie more in making him an evil little imp, an extension of last year's Puck. While has also cut any references to non-supernatural disabilities in the text, whether made by Richard about himself or by other characters as insults. It means we're left with someone who commits his crimes out of pure malice and ambition, with no element of revenge against his own mistreatment - a pure and unforgivable sociopath who does what he does because he's got no concept that anyone else matters.
Terry has suggested the response to her casting herself had an element of misogyny to it, and that this is particularly ironic given the focus of this production (which has an entirely female or AFAB cast.) It does indeed seem that, while the male characters are disposable to Richard, he takes special pleasure in cruelty to women. It's particularly well-tracked with Anne (Katie Erich,) whose initial strength we watch almost literally beaten down into submission in the "proposal" scene. When we next see her she's a zombie-like abused wife, and by the time she's queen she's a painted doll to be shown off, ignored, and easily discarded.
Marianne Oldham also gets the chance to make an impact as a Queen Elizabeth who doesn't lose her drive even during her grief for her sons' murder, and in tonight's performance Joanne Howarth brought remarkable emotion to the Duchess of York considering she was reading in the part for an indisposed cast member. But elsewhere the production does suffer from the fact that this play can be completely eaten up by its lead, with everyone else struggling to make an impact.
And heavy text edits are always a mixed bag: I'm all for stopping some of the longer Shakespeare plays from dragging on too long but they can also lose a lot of character information. Richmond is a fairly generic good-guy antagonist at the best of times, but Sam Crerar has barely had a line as him when he gets installed as Henry VII. This is in a frantic battle scene that mirrors the play's opening, with even the play's second-most famous line ("A horse...") being cut. The production essentially seems to agree with Richard that he's the only character that matters, which may possibly be the point.
In among all the cut lines we also have added ones that quote modern politicians with a touch of the Dick Three to them, most commonly Trump. Red baseball caps start appearing and after a while Richard affects a muscle suit, safe in the knowledge nobody would ever dare point out its obvious fakeness. These recur throughout the show, and I would have liked to have seen it all tied into a more cohesive theme. This looks to me like one of the Globe's occasional productions that reuse sets and costumes from the store to keep the budget down, with a mix of period and modern looks - Terry's black tunic and comedy blond bob may be a nod to Olivier's Richard III. I tend to describe Buckingham as a spin doctor and that's the modern, suited politician we get from Schlesinger's look.
Shakespeare's Richard isn't incidentally disabled, it's very much a portrayal of its time that ties his physical attributes to his evil acts. With this century's discovery of the precise details of the historical Richard's disabilities, the role's been reclaimed by disabled actors, but I guess by definition the idea of the evil tied into that disability is affected with it: Unless you perform exclusively to eugenicists, I can't see a 21st century audience watching a visibly disabled actor get bombarded with ableist abuse for three hours and not feeling any sympathy. So under those terms Terry's fresh take on an old-fashioned view of the character - gleefully wicked, scenery-chewing and more than deserving of his downfall - has to count as one of those conceits that justify the casting. It just might have helped answer the critics if the production around her had been one for the ages, and I don't think this is it.
Richard III by William Shakespeare is booking in repertory until the 3rd of August at Shakespeare's Globe.
Running time: 2 hours 40 minutes including interval.
Photo credit: Marc Brenner.
*although as Terry has pointed out, not all disabilities are visible, and it's not legal to demand someone disclose their disability status, so it's not an exact parallel and neither she nor the director has been asked the question in all this furore
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