Delaney Feener (right) as Richard woos Lady Anne (Connie Castanzo) in Shakespeare’s Richard III.
New York Classical Theatre (NYCT) is a small troupe presenting distinguished plays, mostly tried and true, with occasional novelties in public spaces around New York City. Stephen Burdman, the company’s founder, espouses a performance style he calls “panoramic theater,” which involves spectators following actors as they perform scenes in multiple spots.
This summer NYCT is staging a drastically streamlined version of Shakespeare’s Richard III in three public spaces over four weeks. At the first location (an exquisitely beautiful section of northwest Central Park), the actors led the audience around a small pond, along twisty pathways, and onto a gentle hill descending to a flat, tree-filled space that’s a natural amphitheater. Plagued initially by performance cancellations due to weather, this production may still be seen at Brooklyn Commons and in Carl Shurz Park on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.
Feener (foreground) as Richard with Pamela Sabaugh as the Duchess of York (right), and Rami Margron as Lord Hastings.
Director Burdman has assembled a cast of seven women, six of whom tackle more than one role. One of the evening’s many pleasures is observing the actors transform themselves from one character to another. Briana Gibson Reeves finishes a scene as Sir William Catesby (who, in a departure from the Bard’s text, has just participated in the murder of the Duke of Clarence) and quickly becomes the ailing King Edward IV while rushing from one space to another. Such split-second metamorphoses demonstrate the actors’ capacity to inhabit disparate characters with ease.
Among dramas in the Bard’s canon, Richard III is the one that speaks most directly to our political moment. It depicts a fractured society and dissembling leaders whose self-serving decisions bode dire consequences for the kingdom. Though ordinarily Richard is an unreliable commentator, there’s insight in his statement that “[t]he world is grown so bad / That wrens make prey where eagles dare not perch.”
In its own time, the play was Tudor agitprop; to audiences in 2023, it offers striking parallels between the Wars of the Roses and current socio-political turmoil. The rancid factionalism of the Yorkists and Lancastrians mirrors the divide in Washington, D.C. and other seats of government where autocracy is seeking a foothold.
At the play’s start, the Duke of Gloucester has his eye on higher titles and plots to seize a throne for which he’s not in the line of direct succession. Shakespeare’s text describes Richard as both bodily and morally disabled. While he manages to rise above physical impairment, his moral fallibility is another matter, precipitating his downfall.
Delaney Feener is a poised, slyly humorous Richard. For most of the evening, she plays the character with icy, though smiling, detachment, taking her cue from Richard’s confession, “I clothe my naked villainy / With odd old ends stol’n forth of holy writ, / And seem a saint when most I play the devil.”
Sabaugh (left) as Lord Stanley and Margron as Lord Hastings. Photographs by Miranda Arden.
The role of Richard is gargantuan; and Feener, whom NYCT’s promotional material identifies as “a performer with a disability,” is the sole member of the cast who doesn’t double. She’s also the only one who isn’t yet a member of the Actors' Equity Association (though she’s a candidate for membership).
Feener’s Richard isn’t the “elvish-marked, abortive, rooting hog,” “bottled spider,” or “poisonous bunch-backed toad” that Shakespeare describes. He’s a cool customer, youthful and suave, whose periodic outbursts amount to crafty play-acting, designed to manipulate those around him.
Only at the drama’s climax, as the efforts of Richard’s troops on Bosworth Field seem hopeless, does Feener’s Richard truly lose his cool. Giving vent to the character’s long-suppressed envy and malice, Feener imbues the play’s most famous exclamation—“A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!”—with volcanic emotion and believable desperation.
There’s plenty to debate about NYCT’s abbreviated script, such as the reduction of the Duke of Buckingham’s role and the elimination of Queen Margaret. King Richard’s treacherous relationship with his staunchest supporter, Buckingham, makes clear the magnitude of his villainy in the original. Margaret, though outside the play’s central action, functions as a Greek chorus and fills in the backstory. NYCT’s presentation—alfresco, free of charge, and devoid of a queue to get in—is peripatetic, summer stock Shakespeare and a two-hour diversion for a heterogeneous crowd.
The New York Classical Theatre presentation of Richard III played in Central Park (CPW & W. 103rd St.) through June 25; it runs in Brooklyn Commons (Myrtle Ave. & Bridge St.), June 27 through July 2, and at Carl Shurz Park (E. 87th St. and East End Ave.), July 4-9. Performances are at 7:00 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday. For information and reservations, visit nyclassical.org/richardiii.
Playwright: William Shakespeare
Direction: Stephen Burdman
Costume Design: Sabrinna Fabi
