The women are triumphant in 'Richard III,' A Noise Within's well-timed portrait of a tyrant

William Shakespeare’s “Richard III” is simply a brutal play — brutal to ticker and conscionable arsenic brutal to stage.

An overwhelming handful, this aboriginal past play retains its popularity mostly done the audacious villainy of its rubric character, 1 of Shakespeare’s astir flamboyant sadists.

In Guillermo Cienfuegos’ enlivening, if astatine times unsteady, accumulation astatine A Noise Within, the relation is played by Ann Noble, who forgoes the outdated hunchback but adopts a seething, slithering, perversely seductive aura of menace. Smoking successful a raffish suit similar a movie noir baddie with a daze of reddish hairsbreadth acceptable to torch the world, Noble’s Richard employs a dusky, ironic dependable to flaying effect.

Like Iago, Richard confides his schemes to the assemblage earlier enacting them. A maestro manipulator, he’s some a playwright and an actor, constructing scenes that mightiness look intolerable to propulsion off, past delivering a virtuoso show that leaves everyone flabbergasted by his success.

One specified country involves his wooing of Lady Anne (Erika Soto). During the ceremonial procession for King Henry VI, she is accosted by Richard, who murdered not conscionable her father-in-law, whose coffin she’s accompanying, but besides her husband.

Ann Noble, left, and Erika Soto successful “Richard III” astatine A Noise Within.

(Craig Schwartz)

How could this snake person the effrontery? More puzzling still, however successful the satellite could this monster, self-described (in his opening soliloquy) arsenic “deformed, unfinished” and truthful severely made up that dogs bark astatine him, person her hatred into acquiescence, if not lust?

Noble makes Richard’s conquest not lone convincing but thing of a sport. He delights successful his mastery of the battlefield, subject oregon civilian, flexing his intelligence muscles with a sociopath’s defiant swagger.

The women successful the formed are the large spot of Cienfuegos’ production. Noble, of course, is archetypal successful enactment for praise. But there’s besides standout enactment from the actresses playing pistillate characters, among them Lesley Fera’s bereft Queen Elizabeth, Veralyn Jones’ embittered Duchess of York (Richard’s horrified mother), Trisha Miller’s curse-spewing Queen Margaret and Soto’s self-disgusted Lady Anne.

Intimately acquainted with Richard’s malignity, these ruined royals cognize lone excessively good the toll of his depraved machinations. Their grief and fury acceptable successful question the countervailing unit of justness that, nary substance however belated, cannot beryllium denied.

The ensemble successful a country from “Richard III” astatine A Noise Within.

(Craig Schwartz)

The staging, arranged astir striking tableaux, is astatine erstwhile cinematic and fleetly theatrical. Christine Cover Ferro‘s costumes situate the jockeying courtiers successful a vintage 20th period underworld. Projection decorator Nick Santiago fleshes retired Angela Balogh Calin‘s stripped down scenic design, which combines Elizabethan simplicity with modern unsmooth edges. The country successful the last act, successful which Richard, preparing for conflict against his motivation antithesis, Richmond (Wes Guimarães), is confronted by the ghosts of his victims, plays retired similar a integer nightmare.

A upland of chairs acceptable against the backdrop of a tarp curtain is the starting constituent for a accumulation that recaps Shakespeare’s War of the Roses saga. This preface, which harks backmost to “Richard II” and “Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2” successful summation to the 3 parts of “Henry VI” that instantly precede “Richard III,” crowds an already crowded plot. “Richard III” is simply a carnivore of a play and adding discourse that could person been bullet-pointed successful the programme lone compounds the situation of getting done the plot.

I admit the performers not wanting to belabor their lines. Mark Rylance’s ailment that Shakespeare’s words are being uttered excessively dilatory by modern actors is well-taken. But the hurtling gait of the cast, combined with immoderate misguided blocking that has characters speaking astatine points with their backs to the audience, makes comprehension much hard than necessary.

But the bigger contented is the production’s staccato rhythm. There were excessively galore styles, excessively galore idiosyncratic approaches to the melodramatic poetry. Speak the speech, I commune you, but not successful specified a mode that splinters the wide story.

Cienfuegos is simply a font of directing ideas, but his enactment present could usage much editing. He plays up the comedy, which is arsenic overmuch a portion of the play arsenic its violence. But sometimes the actors overdo it, arsenic erstwhile Noble’s Richard feigns being excessively beatified to run for the crown, adjacent though he’s already killed those household members lasting successful the mode of the throne. It was 1 of the fewer moments successful her different fantabulous show erstwhile subtlety gives mode to silliness.

Ann Noble successful “Richard III.”

(Craig Schwartz)

I emotion Shakespeare arsenic overmuch arsenic the adjacent theatre critic, but the substance should person been much rigorously streamlined for a institution that excessively often seems to beryllium racing against the clock. “Richard III” isn’t “Hamlet,” and adjacent “Hamlet” is aggressively scaled backmost successful performance.

Yet it’s a bully clip to revive a play astir a ruthless person who bamboozles the nationalist portion wreaking havoc connected his government. One acquisition that came done large and wide is that a tyrant volition ever request much loyalty than anyone with a moving conscience tin fulfill — a acquisition that Samuel Garnett‘s Hastings and Lynn Robert Berg’s Duke of Buckingham larn the hard way.

But it’s Noble’s luminous mode with Shakespeare, supported by an inspired institution of redoubtable actresses, that redeems this production. After seeing her Richard, I’m already wondering astir her Hamlet and Iago.