Hell's Black Intelligencer
FOUND the BBC production of King Richard III only partially successful, The family embroilments are _ barely comprehensible on stage; how much less so when only voices guide you was made bafflingly obvious by Peter Watt’s production. Donald Wolfit had fine moments as Richard, particularly in the closing
scenes when he delivered his speeches with a gnarled, vicious desperation, and his oration to the army at Bosworth stirred the blood. But as the Duke of Gloucester "in the -first*three Acts, he either purred in the conventional silken style of Victorian melodrama, or rattled like a Lewis gun with a lethal effect on audibility. I missed the joy of sheer evil which Sir Laurence Olivier communicated so superbly when he_ played Richard here. Whatever Richard may be to the historian, to Shakespeare and his collaborators, he was the incarnation of a man devoted to evil with the tenacity and unremitting exercise of a saint devoted to God, and it is this which explains his extraordinary fascination for his contemporaries. In short, he must have a diabolical charm. Wolfit lacked this, and hence the play, which has no comedy, became dreary with one cursing character after another rushing helter-skelter for the block, and tedious with the wailing of wronged queens.
B.E.G.
M.
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 32, Issue 811, 11 February 1955, Page 10
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212Hell's Black Intelligencer New Zealand Listener, Volume 32, Issue 811, 11 February 1955, Page 10
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