KING CHARLES III Reviews

[LimelightMike]

Posted: 11/1/15 at 1:12am

Today is Sunday, November 1, marking the official opening night performance for KING CHARLES III, the Olivier Award-winning Best Play, housed at the Music Box Theatre.

Per production notes, "The Queen is dead. After a lifetime of waiting, Prince Charles ascends the throne. A future of power lies before him...but how to rule?" The plot imagines a clash between the newly ascended King Charles and Parliament over a measure to restrict freedom of the press that divides the nation—and the Royal Family.

Tim Pigott-Smith (Charles) is joined onstage by Margot Leicester as Camilla, Oliver Chris as William, Richard Goulding as Harry, Lydia Wilson as Kate, amongst others in various roles. The play, written in Shakespearean-style verse, is under the adroit direction of Rupert Goold.

[bwayphreak234]

Posted: 11/1/15 at 9:21am

I absolutely LOVED this play. I am expecting nothing but high praise from the critics.

[wonkit]

Posted: 11/1/15 at 6:50pm

I enjoyed this play very much, mainly because the quality of the acting is uniformly high.  Tim Pigott-Smith as Charles and Miles Richardson (son of the late Ian Richardson) as his private secretary were the stand-outs for me, and I may just go back to see the play for a second time principally to see them. I thought the staging was effective but the writing has its strengths and weaknesses. The iambic pentameter with an occasional closing rhyming couplet was handled well but I thought the ghost of Princess Diana was just plain silly and dramatically unnecessary. I get the impression that much of the audience I was in was reacting to the personalities of the Royal family rather than any understanding of the constitutional difficulties involved. And the resolution - no spoilers - is as improbable as one could imagine.

[loliveve]

Posted: 11/1/15 at 7:57pm

David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter:

While there are interludes of pageantry that mark key turning points, what's most notable about Goold's direction here is its restraint. Unlike his hyperkinetic productions of Macbeth, with Patrick Stewart, or Enron, which tanked on Broadway after much London success, the focus is not on spectacle or tricks, but on the writing. Despite the entertaining theatricality of its language, the play is ultimately more notable for its depth of character and moral complexity, especially as concerns the key figures of Charles, William, Kate and Harry.

The latter travels perhaps the most surprising arc, traced with sensitivity by Goulding. Giddy with the influence of his anti-establishment art student girlfriend (Tafline Steen, terrific), Harry evolves from weary party boy, reconciled to his role as "a ginger joke," to discover a nobility of the soul much like his father's — if similarly deluded. As William, Chris strikes a fine balance between dutiful devotion and self-preserving guile, particularly in his bracing confrontations with Charles. And Bartlett's subversive masterstroke was to take Kate, Britain's national sweetheart, and twist her into a cool-headed manipulator, her ambition driven in part by resentment over the bias toward privileged white men dominating "these little rooms of power." While Wilson shrewdly underplays the villainy, Kate's kinship with one of Shakespeare's most indelible female characters will escape no one.

[loliveve]

Posted: 11/1/15 at 8:00pm

Steven Suskin, Huffington Post: (Rave!)

"King Charles III is smashingly good. Here is a new Shakespearean tragedy, and one at which you won't likely be dozing off."
 

"A canny conceit, done exceptionally well.  Vivat Charles III!"

[ggersten]

Posted: 11/1/15 at 10:20pm

I'm not surprised that this is getting excellent reviews state-side.  It is interesting though how much of some of the character twists and turns are discussed - 

 

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Especially how Kate becomes more like Lady Macbeth.  As well as Diana as a ghost.

 

But, to me, there was power in just the words and acting - and story was almost secondary.  But not.  I appreciated this as a Shakespeare History play that just happens to use real people.  It's not like Richard II and Richard III were "true" history plays.  Bartlett uses the motif - and the presumed familiarity of people that we the audience don't really now - to address themes of power, jealousy, loyalty and all of the other age-old topics.  

Updated On: 11/1/15 at 10:20 PM