SOURCE: Billington, Michael. “From Tyrant to Martyr.” Guardian (1 April 2000): 4.

In the following review, Billington appraises Steven Pimlott's 2000 Royal Shakespeare Company production of Richard II, focusing on how its stark setting created a contemporary mood that underscored the universal relevance of the play.

A great adventure has begun. Over the next year the Royal Shakespeare Company is to stage all eight of Shakespeare's Histories in chronological sequence. It kicks off with Steven Pimlott's fiercely intelligent, modern-dress Richard II in the Other Place, converted by David Fielding into a space resembling a white-walled squash-court or science lab: a perfect setting for this masterly dissection of kingship.

Modern dress, even when stylised with lots of maroon and grey maxi-coats, creates problems for this most ceremonial of plays, one that is steeped in medieval myth and that shows the notion of the king as God-sanctioned monarch giving way to personal ambition and...