Richard II: Another Take

William Shakespeare's "Richard II" is now playing on the Elizabethan Stage of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, which is "the oldest full-scale Elizabethan stage in the Western hemisphere." This year, the OSF will present 778 performances; but "Richard II" is in a world apart... As Director Libby Appel says in the program notes, "While Shakespeare does not flinch from exposing Richard's weaknesses and his inability to make the right decisions for his kingdom, he has enormous sympathy for this imaginative, artistic man. Indeed, the astonishing power of the play is in watching the haunting portrait of the poet-king disintegrate in front of our eyes."