KING CHARLES III Reviews

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

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.

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 -

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