Last Sunday, September 25th, Carleton College students and faculty congregated in the Weitz Cinema to attend a screening of the Almeida Theatre’s Richard III. This production, directed by Rupert Goold and starring Ralph Fiennes, kept the audience for a large part of the afternoon, our Carleton students showing a dedication to theater that was impressive.
Even after the show had ended, and students could finally rush out to finish their essays and problem sets, several agreed to stay behind and offer some initial thoughts on the production! We’ve collected these first impressions below. If you couldn’t go to the screening, you can get a taste of what you missed:
“It was really gritty.” – Alli Domingues ‘17
“Ralph Fiennes was impressive. It was long. It was good, though. I liked that scene where it was all women talking to each other. It felt very feminist because they were all badasses. That congregation of powerful women was very cool. The boys were really bad– they could’ve gotten better child actors.” – Emma Halper ‘18
“I thought it was really cool. I especially liked the minimalist approach to it and how they used skulls to signify all people he killed.” – Alice Hinzmann ‘20
“It was very intense! I liked how they did it in modern dress. And the baby doll was creepy. I’m still thinking about it, but the really interesting thing was the red gloves because gloves symbolize deception.” – Ann Isaacs ‘20
“I didn’t know I could hate Richard more than I did reading the play, but here we are.” – Ben Matson ‘17
“The red gloves reminded me of the hamburger helper gloves.” – Alexandra Pozniak ‘18
“I thought that the rape scene was very brutal and definitely departed from what happened in reading Richard III. And it seemed like a big production decision and I want to think about why they want to depict Richard in that scene in that way.” – Leah Roche ‘17
“My reaction is that towards the end it definitely does start feeling like Tudor propaganda with how great the flowy haired bearded man is. He’s very classically British. Richard is awful, good that he’s dead. Yeah, those are my reactions.” – Eli Sorich ‘17
“I’ve seen four performances of Richard III and two of the films, and that was perhaps my favorite depiction of it. [Both eds, in unison: ‘Why?’] I’m gonna draw upon the Ian McKellen film; it had a similar idea with modernizing some aspects, but they stripped it down and made it very bare, which allowed them to focus more on the psychology. That was a lot more impactful than just putting it into a different era or just having them have modern things. And the excavation site — that couldn’t have been done for any of the performances I’ve seen because they were all made before 2011, so that was an interesting aspect. My only problem with it was that they should have kept that grave just for Richard’s death: either that, or use it for every single death. Because they really only used it for Rivers’ death, and I feel like his death isn’t as impactful as others, so they should’ve used it for everybody’s death or just Richard’s. Besides that, though, I loved every single aspect of the play. It was awesome.” – Addison Williamson ‘20
We extend our thanks to the English and MARS Departments for sponsoring the event!