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Last Updated: Nov 14, 2008 - 12:49:26 PM |
Friday night, senators McCain and Obama met for their first so-called debate. From what I’ve heard, there was a clear winner – though who won depends upon whom you ask.
Personally, I’ve long since given up on these rituals. If I want to watch people recite carefully rehearsed lines, I prefer that they be professional actors, and that their lines be written by someone with something to say.
So, last Friday, I attended the opening night performance of the Henley Street Theatre Company’s Richard III. If you’ve got a free evening, I strongly recommend this wonderfully inventive production.
Long one of Shakespeare’s most popular plays, Richard III follows the career of a ruthless royal politician who eliminates a series of kinsmen in his ascent to the throne.
Curiously, though Richard is as thoroughgoing a villain as Iago or Macbeth, audiences tend to root for him – at least through the first half of the play. Perhaps this is because Richard lets us in on his devilish plots in advance. Perhaps it’s because most of his victims are gullible fools.
Whatever the reason, audiences usually stick with Richard until he orders the murder of his two young nephews – including the rightful king – in the Tower of London. Even thereafter, he remains by far the most fascinating character on the stage.
As portrayed by Scott Wichmann – one of Richmond’s leading actors – Richard again proves Shakespeare’s most charming villain.
Performed in modern dress, Henley Street’s Richard III makes ingenious use of several television screens placed around the periphery of the stage. Several of the play’s great soliloquies become the text of political ads. The choral comments of lesser characters are transformed into person-on-the-street interviews or, in one case, an argumentative exchange
between contending spin doctors.
These modern touches won’t please everyone. The Times Dispatch’s rather stodgy critic found them “distracting.” I had my own reservations – as I generally like my Shakespeare straight up.
But the true test of any Shakespearean production lies in whether it honors the text – and this
one does, with great energy and ingenuity.
If you’ve never seen live Shakespeare, this cleverly modern production might be just the
thing. On the other hand, if you can’t get enough blank verse, Richard III is the only game in town until mid-October, when Hamlet opens at the Richmond Shakespeare Festival.
Either way, Shakespeare offers the ideal antidote for an overdose of modern politics. If you find Obama’s vacuous generalities increasingly unsatisfying – or McCain’s attack ads unworthy – a few hours spent at Richard’s Yorkist court or Hamlet’s Elsinore will make this year’s election look like something out of Periclean Athens.
Which is precisely why I chose Richard III over that debate. As the present campaign grinds on, I find myself ever less interested in what either candidate has to say. It all seems so drearily familiar.
Senator McCain, a man I have long admired, has apparently become the prisoner of the Republican campaign machinery – and the negative tactics that have typified Republican campaigns since Richard Nixon’s time.
McCain has occasionally shown signs of breaking free from his handlers, but – like his political hero, Teddy Roosevelt – he has learned to curb his maverick tendencies and listen to his advisers.
Sadly, the result has been a negative campaign which will – should McCain win – complicate his natural instinct to govern in cooperation with the Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress.
Senator Obama is using precisely the strategy which has worked for four of our past five presidents: running against the incumbent; presenting himself as a likable outsider; promising to clean up Washington, rise above partisanship, and bring about some magical, unspecified change.
This strategy worked for Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, who ran against actual, unpopular incumbents.
It worked equally well for Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush – despite the fact that they ran primarily against men whose names did not appear on the ballot. Carter ran against the scandal-ridden administration of former president Richard Nixon, not the honorable incumbent, Gerald Ford. Bush ran against the tawdry misdeeds of Bill Clinton, not the squeaky-clean Al Gore.
Similarly, Obama, should he succeed, will have won by running against George W. Bush – not John McCain. He will then face the enormous task of defining himself after the election – while fending off importunate Democratic congressional majorities with ambitious legislative agendas and far more sophistication about how Washington actually works.
It won’t be pretty.
All in all, it’s rather disheartening. Whoever wins, our next president will come into office without a true mandate – burdened by the tactics he used during the campaign.
Shakespeare understood this problem all too well. In play after play, he presented the plight of a ruler dealing with the consequences of his crooked path to power.
For the modest price of a ticket, you can enjoy watching King Richard struggle with this dilemma. Should our next president prove unable to transcend his own campaign, the price – for all of us – will be considerably higher.
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