Richard II is one of Shakespeare’s least produced plays. Its title character is a reckless young man with no respect for the laws of the kingdom he inherited. He became king at age ten and never had to learn to be an adult. His opponent, Henry Bolingbroke, is an ambitious nobleman trapped in a medieval hierarchy. He is a ruthless opportunist who does not engender any sympathy from his position as underdog. In other words, this is a play without a hero. Nor does it have a fascinating villain like Richard III or Iago, or a scintillating heroine like Portia or Rosalind.

Furthermore, the play is full of politicians who do not say what they mean or mean what they say. It is difficult, then, to decipher the play’s many long speeches. The characters who do say what they mean-Gaunt and Carlisle-endanger themselves. And, as often in Shakespeare’s early style, the blank verse is embedded with images and metaphors that are not always easily accessible as the words go by.

But this is a rich and complicated play, emerging from a master-metaphor of a

despoiled garden, a lost Eden. And, as with most of the challenges that Shakespeare issues, the rewards of engaging the difficulties of Richard II can be profound.

Acorn Theater is in the process of delivering an intense and completely riveting version at various venues in the Portland, Maine, area. Paul Haley as Richard believes he is invulnerable until, once he has banished his rival Bolingbroke, he suddenly realizes how dangerous his rival is. It is a wonderful commentary on power. The more you exercise it the more fragile it can become. His rival will learn the same lesson as Henry IV. Haley’s Richard grows as the play develops, until by the time of the Deposition Scene, he is dominant. The problem, of course, is that his maturity and command are, by this time, serving his self-dramatized downfall. Here, no doubt exists that Richard capitulates without much pressure. Bolingbroke does not order his army to march silently back and forth beneath the parapets on which Richard lurks. Randall Tuttle’s Bolingbroke is a cocky young man, quite willing to take chances in the service of his ambition. His problem, of course, will be that to gain power he has to give up all the things that make it worthwhile, including legitimacy. His kingship will only elicit civil wars, particularly since he must have the former king killed to secure his own throne. Karen Ball as Queen Isabel reflects Richard in a Jamesian sense, in her mercurial behavior, punctuated by foot-stomping tantrums. But she too grows toward a tender parting scene with the deposed Richard. Michael Howard’s Gaunt is a passionate defender of an England that is already receding into the memory of a few old men.

The setting is spare-really only a red throne on a platform-the costumes modern, and much of the action is played out on the same level as the audience. Indeed, many of the speeches are directed to us. Richard appeals to us as he despairs at the loss of his soldiers. Carlisle (Jeffrey Roberts) asks us to agree with him about the heinousness of Bolingbroke’s ascension to the throne. Richard indicts us for having betrayed him. We can hardly be detached observers. I found myself siding with Richard-despicable as he is- because I, like Carlisle, know that civil wars will take up most of the century of which we are at the beginning-the fifteenth. But, like Richard, I was helpless before the momentum that Bolingbroke builds up.

To edit this vast and complex script for production is never easy. I took issue with Director Michael Levine’s decisions at moments. I think the allusions, early and late, to Abel and Cain should be retained. They argue the primal nature of the murders committed-first of a duke, then of a king-and suggest that England is well east of Eden by the end. Richard should have his sneering details about Bolingbroke’s wooing of the population-oyster wenches and draymen. York should be able to respond to Northumberland’s excuse about deleting Richard’s title: “The time hath been, Would you have been so brief with him, he would Have been so brief with you to shorten you, For taking so the head, your whole head’s length,” along with his subsequent debate with Bolingbroke. Richard loses his mirror in the Deposition Scene. If Bolingbroke gets his lines about his “unthrifty son,” as here, he should also mention the robberies that the son is alleged to be committing. Having seized the crown, Bolingbroke has made the fact of theft a dominant mode of behavior in England. Gad’s Hill is just over the horizon.

The payoff for the editing is considerable, though. Carlisle’s remarkable narrative about Mowbray is retained. It tells of a banished man who has lived out the English idea of knightly service in foreign climates while his native land experiences a few brutal and profoundly unsettling months. And the Duchess of York (Deborah Paley), in the usually deleted Aumerle subplot, delivers a wonderful and very funny plea to the new king from her knees.

The production will play again on May 16 at 8 P.M. at the Portland Museum of Art; May 17 at 2 P.M. at Riverbank Park, Westbrook; May 21 at 7 P.M. at the Empire Dine and Dance on Congress Street, Portland (where I saw it); May 22 at 7:30 P.M. at the Inn on Peaks Island; and on May 23 at 2 P.M. at Riverbank Park in Westbrook. It will be worth the pilgrimage to see this absorbing production of a seldom-produced masterpiece.

Written by William Shakespeare; directed by Michael Howard and Michael Levine
Performed in and around Portland, Maine