“Richard III” at Cockpit Theatre
Jeremy Malies in Central London
★☆☆☆☆
12 July 2026
Half a dozen oil barrels confront you as the lights come up on the Cockpit Theatre stage. “Well, at least Clarence is going to get a good dunking in the butt of Malmsey!” I thought. No such luck in this uninspired, haphazard production of Richard III benefiting from what I contend is unwarranted critical mass after a recent run in Madrid that has been greeted by superlatives and numerous awards.
A “bold dystopian reimagining” reads the blurb. I agree that a dystopia is an imagined world, but insofar as Shakespeare deviated from the chronicles significantly and created a gleefully evil psychopath then this is always a dystopian piece, so the supposed take is in no way original. And there is little that is revelatory in the production.
Extra levels of irony abound in decisions made by Argentinian playwright, choreographer, and actor Nicolás Pérez Costa who opts to direct himself as Richard. If your character is a hubristic despot and your production has shortcomings then the absurdities pile up.
The able-bodied Costa plays Richard on a pair of forearm crutches. In interviews, he has referred to “an image that emerged many years ago in another production”. You have to suppose that this is Sir Antony Sher playing the role at Stratford in 1984, a crucial difference being that Sher was working with Olivier-winning director Bill Alexander and is known to have listened to Alexander during a collaborative rehearsal process.
As for Costa playing Richard with no lived experience of a physical challenge, we have had Michelle Terry do this – not without a hoo-ha. Also quite recently Adjoa Andoh directed herself as Richard and made the ludicrous decision to argue that the character’s “otherness” in her version was being black.
The production here is flamboyant physical theatre. It has little substance and not enough central ideas to sustain a concept production. The Madrid run was in Spanish; this version with the introduction of some UK-based actors is in English. I longed for Costa to perhaps make references to his native Argentina and its experience of numerous dictators or perhaps the Spanish Civil War given the run in Madrid. Any intelligent, relevant insertion would have been welcome.
Richard talking of the monastery at Chertsey as per the original text seemed unambitious. Shakespeare himself – who often introduced current events into his non-history plays – would have wanted a few contemporary insertions. Chertsey certainly didn’t gel with the overall approach. The treatment involves aviator shades, Gothic make-up, sucking of lollipops, and bizarre fur and velvet costumes. (None of the technical team are name-checked.) Such gimmicks can only take you so far. Costa would appear to have asked his colleagues to leer maniacally at the central action as if they were in an asylum. At times I thought I was watching The Changeling or Marat/Sade.
Richard is clad bizarrely in vaguely sado-masochistic leather and fishnet fabrics. I didn’t understand how this could correspond with the self-loathing of the first soliloquy in which he complains that dogs bark at him on the street. Would he want to expose his withered flesh? Only when the new king dons gorgeous blue and gold raiment does costuming help matters. I should have liked some stagecraft with the ghosts at Bosworth Field and a few hints at the Princes in the Tower who are unseen and dealt with in a cursory manner. At 90 minutes with no interval, there are of course bound to be cuts but the narrative rarely flows, and the dream speech of Clarence (played by Tom Longmire) was hacked at excessively. Many see it as among the finest speeches in any of the plays.
Staging does indeed work when a horse is created for Richard from the barrels and a pair of stepladders. Costa shows outstanding agility as he steps across barrels while still on the crutches, but it is bravado to no great purpose. The much hyped “live percussion” consists of actors bashing the oil barrels with little sense of group endeavour and an unsteady pulse. The rawness of all this does not propel the narrative and I found it tiresome. Rarely is Richard’s paranoia explored in any way.
It is only Germán Martins who comes anywhere near being impressive as Catesby, Richard’s advisor and enforcer. I could believe in him as he canvasses for support, spreads propaganda, and assesses who might be truly loyal and who is merely professing enthusiasm.
Richard is likened to multiple animals in the text including (unsurprisingly) a snake but when Costa (who has a limited range of gestures) stuck his tongue out for the tenth time I truly wished myself elsewhere. A major grouch is that with many of the characters being commanders or former soldiers, Costa rarely creates a martial tone and the atmosphere is often pantomimic.
The production could have made more use of the two upper tiers running around the stage, notably when our perspective is widened and messengers bring news of rebellions elsewhere or the commoners are addressed at the Guildhall. I do not believe that Perez has considered the overall dynamics of the play in any depth. This is a showy, unreflective project with few merits.
