Richard II at the Bridge Theatre review: Jonathan Bailey is electric as the flawed king

Jonathan Bailey gives the best performance I’ve ever seen of Shakespeare’s flawed monarch, an erratic tyrant who gains dignity once deposed. This might sound like faint praise since major London productions of the play are rare. But the two other Richards I recall are David Tennant and Fiona Shaw, so props to the star of Bridgerton and Wicked.

Bailey inhabits and humanizes the king in a clean, clear, martial staging from Nicholas Hytner that feels right for our times. Altogether this is a winningly bold combination of casting, programming and cultural curation to follow the Bridge’s joyful post-Covid moneyspinner, Guys and Dolls.

There the actors rubbed shoulders with the audience. Here we make up a horseshoe of spectators around an oblong stage thrusting into the auditorium; at one point, we become witnesses at a show trial. Bailey swaggers on to Succession-style music, in a simple crown but with a bespoke frock coat and sockless feet in velvet slippers, setting him apart from courtiers in suits or jeans. A saturnine beard gives an impish frame to his imperious behavior.

In short order Richard exiles his troublesome cousin and potential rival Henry Bullingbrook (striking newcomer Royce Pierreson) and seizes Bullingbrook’s late father John of Gaunt’s estate to undertake a foolish war in Ireland. Where he loftily believes his divine right justifies any caprice, Bullingbrook is more plain-spoken and pragmatic in courting nobles’ favour.

Yet when he challenges Richard – in this case, by training a massive field gun on the theatre’s balcony where Bailey stands spotlit in a white shift – he becomes a traitor. Richard, meanwhile, is transformed through grief over the loss of his kingdom into a kind of Christ figure, a metamorphosis Bailey achieves with great skill. As Hytner has said, he speaks Shakespeare’s verse as if born to it.

The play has some of Shakespeare’s finest poetry (including Gaunt’s “This England” speech, delivered well by an understudy at the performance I attended due to the indisposition of Clive Wood). There are echoes of Hamlet in Richard’s reflective soliloquy on landing back in Wales, and of King Lear in his character arc. The ruthless plotting and politicking – opponents here are dispatched with a bullet to the back of the neck - spark associations with Shakespeare’s other Tudor history plays: it’s boggling to remember he wrote them in seemingly random order over two decades.

Still, Richard II, with its rigid structure and strict double-narrative about two different styles of kingship, is never going to be a crowd-pleaser unless it’s by star casting. Hence Bailey. He commands the stage and even allows a little camp to seep into the character (Richard’s marriage to his shopaholic wife may be transactional). He doesn’t sugar the king’s brattish reluctance to cede the crown but in later speeches attains a stricken grandeur.

Hytner’s production brims with top-notch character actors, including Michael Simkins as a dogged Duke of York and Christopher Osikanlu Colquhoun as a suave Duke of Northumberland. It also has a future star in Royce Pierreson. Bullingbrook is only his third professional stage role: he brings to it a great sense of command. At the end, Bailey quite rightly called him on stage to share his join his solo curtain call.

Bridge Theatre, to May 10; bridgetheatre.co.uk