STAGE REVIEW : ‘Richard II’: No Great Shakes : Kelsey Grammer Offers a Towering Performance

Director Robert Egan’s staging of “Richard II” at the Mark Taper Forum has so many ideas and effects competing for attention with Shakespeare’s text that Wednesday’s magnitude 6.1 earthquake could almost have passed for one more attention-getter.

The ground rolled, the lights swayed, the actors froze in midsentence and a few audience members started for the doors. But, in general, everyone at Wednesday’s press preview remained uncommonly calm. When the motion stopped, Kelsey Grammer as Richard broke the tension by saying “I think we’re all right,” and simply picked up where he’d left off.

It was the only bit of stage business for which one had to credit a higher auteur than the director. In all other respects, this production is a meddlesome, expeditious, occasionally intriguing, slightly augmented and racially biased “Richard II.” That bias is the staging’s most overt intention, but its statement is also obvious and in almost every case, entirely too politically correct.

All of arrogant King Richard’s supporters are Caucasian and, except for York and the Bishop of Carlisle, also callous and greedy. All of Henry Bolingbroke’s supporters, on the other hand, are an honorable band of African-Americans, Latinos and Asian-Americans trying to do the right thing, even if Bolingbroke’s ascension to the throne triggers the same corrupting effect it had on Richard.

The marked racial separation carries a strong message: That the power elite is white, male and mostly misguided, and that non-whites must rise to claim their righteous place in the society.

Since the overbearing King Richard goes through a protracted, self-aggrandizing contrition before he begins to see the error of his ways, it also reinforces the statement Egan appears to be making--a statement that demands a willing color-blindness since, whatever their allegiances, many of these royal characters are intricately related by blood.

That is the main thrust of the piece, which pivots around a towering performance by Grammer (Dr. Frazier Crane on TV’s “Cheers”), who excels at sudden mood changes and abrupt nastiness as the early Richard. It’s a level of refinement he does not always match as the repentant Richard later on, although his “I wasted time and now time wasteth me” emerges from him as a soul-shattering plaint.

Too often, the emotional quotient of the play is simply wanting. This highly conceptualized “Richard II” moves with a martial, brisk efficiency that keeps us interested, but at great cost to its poetry. Robert Jason’s Bolingbroke and John Vickery’s Mowbray (later also the Bishop of Carlisle) have the requisite verbal thunder to fuel their political clashes. But King Richard’s courtiers and minions (Ryan Cutrona, Tom Fitzpatrick, Michael Cerveris) behave like fawning leeches, their voices more often thin, fussy and flat than resonant. And Barry Shabaka Henley’s John of Gaunt all but throws away the magnificence of his “scept’red isle” speech.

Physically, too, the production reflects this utilitarian sweep, but with a difference. Nathan Birnbaum’s vaguely Asian wooden clappers and drums underscore the warriorlike demeanor of this “Richard.” And Yael Pardess’ high-tech, jungle-gym set, lit in pools and rectangles by R. Stephen Hoyes, makes its own impressive statement. Backed by a scarlet drop, furnished with folding chairs and dotted with mannequins in period garments that substitute for bodies in acts of violence, it is made up of units that assemble and reassemble to create changing venues.

Inevitably, there is minor tampering (some eliminated characters) and major tampering (an opening, ritualized enactment of the murder of Gloucester that Shakespeare never wrote, but for which neo-Shakespearean lines have been written).

In the end, however, it is not the messing around with text so much as with tone that has a sterilizing effect. Egan’s insistence on a rigorous functionality, his imposition of an extraneous point of view (no matter how well-intended to make us re-examine our own values) undercut the simple and majestic tragedy of a monarch felled by his own hubris. And we’re back to square one with the question about the classics that won’t go away: How much can a text be bent to suit different ends?

The answer, of course, will be different every time. In the case of this “Richard,” there is too much calculated, often thrilling imagination, but too little heart. Good ideas abound without enough follow-through to give coherence to the whole. And, despite a fascinating actor in the title role, there is not enough vulnerability to offset all that muscle.

“Richard II,” Mark Taper Forum, 135 N. Grand Ave., Music Center. Tuesdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7:30 p.m.; Saturdays-Sundays, 2:30 p.m. Ends June 7. $26-$32; (213) 365-3500, (714) 740-2000, TDD (213) 680-4017. Running time: 2 hours, 40 minutes.

‘Richard II’

Carlos Carrasco: Northumberland

Michael Cerveris: Duke of Aumerle, son of York

Ryan Cutrona: Greene/Earl of Salisbury

Tom Fitzpatrick: Bushy/Sir Stephen Scroope/1st Murderer

John Vickery: Mowbray/Bishop of Carlisle

Kelsey Grammer: Richard II

Melora Hardin: Queen to King Richard

Barry Shabaka Henley: John of Gaunt/Sir Pierce of Exton

Robert Jason: Henry Bolingbroke

Eugene Lee: Duke of Gloucester/Lord Ross/Groom

Philip Moon: Lord Willoughby/Exton’s Man

Natsuko Ohama: Duchess of Gloucester/Duchess of York/Servant

Winston Jose Rocha-Castillo: 2nd Murderer/Lord Fitzwater/Man

Albert Owens: Abbot/Ensemble

Luis Antonio Ramos: Henry Percy

Jeanne Sakata: Servant/Gardener

Norman Snow: Lapoole/Bagot/Welsh Captain/Keeper

A Center Theatre Group-Mark Taper presentation of Shakespeare’s play. Director Robert Egan. Sets Yael Pardess. Lights R. Stephen Hoyes. Costumes Robert Blackman. Music/Sound Nathan Birnbaum. Fight director Randy Kovitz. Text editor-collator Diana Maddox. Production stage manager Mary Michele Miner. Stage manager Diana Blazer.