A queen of a king

This all-male production of Richard II, in which Mark Rylance makes a highly unusual king, launches an intellectually adventurous Shakespeare/Marlowe season, with several plays respectively performed by men-only and all-female companies.

But how strange to choose Richard II, which boasts only peripheral female roles, to launch the single-sex theatre experiment. The genderchallenging thrills come later on, with Kathryn Hunter's King Lear and Petruchio.

In the meantime, John Carroll's Elizabethanstyle production fiercely pits Rylance's unsympathetic but humorous King, who even jokes about the size of his grave, against Liam Brennan's saturnine, blackcostumed Bolingbroke.

As for men playing women, only Peter Shorey's androgynous Duchess of York convinces. A whitefaced Michael Brown, in voluminous dress, shortish hair and long plaits, looks absurdly dragged-up to ride a gay carnival float. His acting is intentionally artificial and renders Queen Isabel moaning and affected.

The Globe's weird diktat that male actors should walk in what seems a mannered shuffle travesties female grace. The authentic Elizabethan clothing is too fussy and distractingly ostentatious: the headwear even obscures a clear view of faces.

Mark Rylance's monarch, however, sets the production, which I saw at a preview, humming with controversy and interest. First seen in a long, furry, feathered hat, high, white boots and puffed-out doublet, this Richard looks, though never sounds, every other inch a queen.

And when provoked by John McEnery's ailing John of Gaunt, Rylance reacts by repeatedly striking him with a posy of flowers. It is a curiously child-like gesture and typical. For Rylance's Richard is defined by haughtiness and petulance, detachment and mocking wit. He studiously ignores the furious war of words between Bolingbroke and Mowbray while whispering to his courtiers. Rarely has a Richard played so high and mighty.

Liam Brennan's wonderful Bolingbroke, all edgy, furtive and glowering, looks like someone from whom you would not risk buying a second-hand castle. In him, resentment simmers then seethes. Rylance's Richard reacts to the loss of crown and liberty with tremulous composure and no selfpitying arias of anguish.

Instead he uses humour for self-distracting protection. He draws laughter from the jaws of grief, even miming his dead self speaking from the grave. This unmoving performance, which lacks a spiritual journeying, remarkably reassesses Richard as a self-justifying, obstinate stoic.

Until 27 September. Box office: 020 7401 9919.

Richard II