SOURCE: Morley, Sheridan. Review of Richard II. New Statesman (9 June 2003): 46.

In the following review of director Tim Carroll's 2003 production of Richard II at the Globe in London, Morley congratulates Mark Rylance's outstanding Richard, a performance regrettably unmatched by those of the remaining cast members.

The new, all-male, Tim Carroll production of Richard II is an excellent idea. The production aims to be as close as possible to its first production in 1595 (the Globe calls this “original practices”), and is performed in the Elizabethan costume of Shakespeare's time rather than the medieval dress of the play's setting, roughly 200 years earlier.

Movement, music, speech, dance and design are all shaped to the original productions. Even the curtain call, a dance beautifully choreographed (by Sian Williams) and including the entire cast, is in keeping with the additional entertainment that Shakespeare's audiences would have expected. As happens all too often, however, the...