Poster: Dear World. João Castro / Royal Studio. 2014
David Tennant to take on ‘challenge’ of Richard II for Royal Shakespeare Company
David Tennant is to return to the Royal Shakespeare Company to play Richard II, five years after audiences and critics hailed his performance as Hamlet.
The production headed by the former Doctor Who star leads off a winter season at the RSC that includes the world premiere of the stage adaptations of Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall and Bring up the Bodies.
Doran said the part would be a “challenge” for Tennant. “Of course Hamlet was a challenge, it’s the Everest,” he said: “Richard II is written entirely in verse. He has no problem with verse. He breathes it, he makes it sound as if it is completely effortless.”
The artistic director said the principal challenge for Tennant’s Richard II will be “the sense of the man’s volatility, fragility; that psychology is more alien to David’s character”
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