Richard II, Oregon Shakespeare Festival 

/ Thomas Theatre/

A king becomes a man. Richard II is dangerously out of touch with his kingdom. He wastes money, raises taxes to support his lavish lifestyle, plays favorites and cares more about his vanity than the common good. When Henry Bolingbroke—father of the future Henry V—challenges Richard for the throne, it’s a fight the king can’t win. But in losing his crown he gains far greater things: his humanity and his soul. Shakespeare’s luminous, poetic masterpiece is the first of four plays that chronicle the House of Lancaster’s rise and the beginning of the Wars of the Roses.

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Breath of Kings - Rebellion, Stratford, Canada

/ Tom Patterson Theatre/

Part one of a "fast-paced new distillation" of Shakespeare's Henriad. Lust for power leads to political turmoil in this fast-paced new distillation of Shakespeare’s epic histories of a nation and its rulers – their lives, their battles and their deaths. Enjoy this epic drama on its own – or follow its exciting sequel in Breath of Kings: Redemption.

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The Complete Deaths, Spymonkey

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All 74 on-stage deaths from Shakespeare's oeuvre realized in physical comedy by four actors.  With a LED-display counter monitoring the 75 deaths (they include the fly in Titus Andronicus) and propelling the action to the zero, The Complete Deaths is a fast-paced and entertaining tribute to the tragic ends of so many of Shakespeare's characters.  

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Complete Works: Table Top Shakespeare

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“A salt and pepper pot for the king and queen. A vase for the prince. A matchbox for the servant. A toilet roll tube for the Innkeeper. A water bottle for the messenger.

In Complete Works six performers create condensed versions of each and every Shakespeare play, comically and intimately retelling them, using a collection of everyday objects as stand-ins for the characters on the one-metre stage of an ordinary table top."

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Richard II, Saitama Arts Theatre

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This highly theatrical production features a large cast of performers from the two companies of the Saitama Theatre. It therefore mixes young interpreters (Saitama Next) with elderly ones (Saitama Gold), who symbolically move on wheelchairs so as to highlight a feeling of the passing of time and of a physical and moral decaying.

Under the direction and supervision of its Artistic Director (the late Yukio Ninagawa), the “Sai-no-kuni Shakespeare Series”  has put on such popular works as Hamlet and Macbeth as well as plays rarely staged in Japan, such as Antony and Cleopatra and the epic trilogy Henry VI. Also popular is the “All Male Series,” which stages plays as they were originally performed, with an all-male cast. Starting with our co-production of King Lear with the Royal Shakespeare Company, the series has been successfully staged overseas such as in Stratford-upon-Avon, London, New York, and Seoul. Now it represents one of the most pioneering Shakespeare productions in Asia, and keeps receiving global attention.

Richard II is the last Shakespeare's play Ninagawa directed, since he passed away aged 80 at the beginning of May 2016.

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