“Conscience is but a word that cowards use,
Devised at first to keep the strong in awe.”
The boar returns. Not in armour, nor in the medieval trappings to which it is usually confined, but in the sharp suits and clipped brutality of the 1930s and ’40s — an age when tyranny wore a modern face and goose-steps echoed across Europe.
This Richard III is brought forward into that unsettled century. With a gender-fluid cast, it refuses to indulge in comfortable tradition. Instead, it asks us to confront the disquieting truth that despotism is not history’s relic but its recurring habit.
What Shakespeare saw so clearly — and what this production makes plain — is that ruthless ambition requires only opportunity, and that the distance between stability and tyranny is alarmingly small.
This production is being presented by the Grove's in-house company, the very team responsible for recent successes such as The Mirror Crack'd, Macbeth, Jeeves & Wooster, The Shawshank Redemption, and The Madness of George III.