The Emmanuel Chapel at St. Luke’s Cathedral in Portland is an ingenious venue for Portland Shakespeare Company’s staging of Richard II, which features a captivating Ian Carlsen as the somehow vain yet deep King Richard.

The intimate space and gorgeous acoustics make for a singular experience, in which the audience serves as not just witnesses to the events, but also as courtiers. At times, the audience is almost a jury of sorts, an English concept that was used but hadn’t quite evolved when the play is set, about 1400.

The luxe costumes hold up to the audience’s scrutiny from such close proximity, and, though he is working with limited tools in a place that is not normally a stage, Ian Jones works the lights to great effect.

Richard II is the gateway to William Shakespeare’s history plays, which include Richard II, Henry IV, Part 1, Henry IV, Part 2, and Henry V, known together as the “Henriad” because they chronicle the rise of Henry IV (the former Henry Bolingbroke) and eventually of the young Prince Hal, Henry V.

Richard himself was crowned as a young boy and believes, as England did generally, that his right as King was given to him by God. That gives him a lot of freedom—the type that we colonials usually take issue with – and his vanity and whim, and perhaps his personality disorder — are the basis of some major missteps. That leaves an opening for his cousin, Henry of Bolingbroke, to rise up, with the support of the masses and a few key powerful people.

The play marks a turning point of sorts for that theory of Divine Right; certainly it failed to give Richard’s banishment of Bolingbroke any teeth. But, though it all might see obvious to us Americans, Bolingbroke’s more popular power is no slam dunk.

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Carlsen’s Richard, stripped of his power and his regal garments, eventually appears barefoot and resembling Jesus. Perhaps there was something to it all? James Noel Hoban’s Bolingbroke, played with a subdued earnestness and a perpetual look of worry, seems to question the wisdom of what comes to pass. It’s a foreshadowing not just of the trouble he sees in Shakespeare’s next “Henry plays,” as the usurper of, perhaps, God’s own choice of King, but also, in real life, of England’s War of the Roses.

Carlsen, above all, gives this poetry real emotion and humanity — the melancholy of his Hamlet-like soliloquy late in the play is almost palpable. “I wasted time, and now doth time waste me.” And Maureen Butler gives her Duchess of York (she also plays the Duchess of Gloucester) a splendid comedic intensity to her rage.

The plays are written entirely in poetry, which lends itself to Shakespeare’s rich language and layered metaphors. That can make it difficult to follow at times, and it would be wise to brush up on the story ahead of time to follow the events — not just the deadly battles, but also the tangled personal skirmishes of these often ambivalent characters.

The actors must contend with the elevated language, too, and sometimes the sing-song nature of their lines interferes with the flow. But the Portland Shakespeare Company delivers a production at beautiful St. Luke’s that shouldn’t be missed.

Daphne Howland is a freelance writer based in Portland.


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