Richard III - Trafalgar Studios, London

Richard III is a Shakespeare play famous for the absolute villainy of Richard, Duke of Gloucester, as he weaved his way to the throne in the aftermath of civil war. Through his mastery plan of manipulation and murder, along with his absolute charm and wit, Richard finally achieved his target, but having alienated many powerful men along the way, leading to horrifying consequences. 

The play itself is interesting for its structure and creation of Richard as a character and how, at the beginning, he keeps the audience onside with his thoughtful monologues where he updates those watching on his plans, as though they are a part of his aspiration. However, as the play progresses, he even manages to alienate the audience just as he alienates and abandons Buckingham and Hastings. Not only that, but the wit of Richard is undeniable his best feature. Despite the play being an almost horrific drama, the charm of Richard as a character, along with the questioning attitudes of the characters around him, make Shakespeare's play as entertaining and humorous as it is appalling and striking. 

The performance within the London studios embraced these aspects with a full force. With Martin Freeman, an actor famous for both his comedic roles along with his more dramatically adventurous roles such as those from Sherlock and Fargo, playing the title role, every aspect of Richard's personality was embraced; the comedic, almost flirty attitude that came with the witty charisma was just as hilarious as the intimidating anger was electrifying, frankly even disturbing. 

Meanwhile, while i hadn't imagined many of the characters being the way they were cast, the casting was in fact ingenious. From the northern playboy-ness of Rivers, to the almost innocently-greasy Hastings, each character was given a personality outside of their words, which was embraced with full enthusiasm from each actor. And along with each personality, the horror was also fully embraced, with everything from blood dripping heads to needing theater-provided shirts in the front seats (like us) to avoid getting blood splatters on your clothing. 

As a whole, the play was two hours of enrapturing, if at times horrifying, perfection of imaginary interpretation - one that will be difficult to live up to for any play, Shakespeare or no. 

P.S. Having exited by the stage door, we also got to see the whole cast do the ice bucket challenge immediately afterwards - with them all still covered in gore. Needless to say, it was hilarious.