Richard III

I finally had a chance to see the Propeller Theatre's all-male "Richard III" at the Huntington last night.

It's a remarkable production, the design is fantabulous, awesome cast and it's creepy as hell, sort of Richard meets Grand Guignol meets "Saw".

All the violence that is usually left to the imagination is put front and center, with unlikely implements: chainsaws, power drills, giant syringes, all employed in this macabre Marat/Sade madhouse peopled by white-masked ghouls.

Richard is a serial killer with a hump and a stump.  Even one of his henchmen resembled John Wayne Gacy.  And when Richard kills this guy by stabbing him in the back, he dies and then suddenly pops up to life again, like some deranged wind-up toy.  That's when I started to wonder if this was all just a vision in Richards' head, the nightmare sequence a dream within a dream. 

So, I thought it was pretty great.  You should go, if you have the chance.  It's on this week and next.