Here’s a headline which literally stopped me in my tracks — twice. See if you can see where:
Actress cast as Richard III? I thought casting men as women went out in the seventeenth century, but since when did casting women as men become a thing? (As an aside, how will Dickless III play the seduction of Lady Anne in Act I Scene 2 without the audience breaking into uncontrollable laughter?)
And no, by all means play the hunchbacked king as a non-impaired man, which will make the “poisonous bunch-backed toad” line (among many other such insults in the play) completely meaningless. Fucking hell; why not just play Richard III as a frog, and have done with it?
Then again, this is Britishland, home of The Bard, where I once walked out of a dreadful performance of Macbeth (at the Barbican Theatre, by the Royal Shakespeare Company) at the halfway point.
So anything’s possible. Expect to see a guest appearance by Willy Wonka or David Beckham in footballer kit during the final battle scene, where “Richard” utters the immortal line:
“A purse! A purse! My queendom for a purse!”