Richard III

One of Shakespeare's absolute masterpieces, Richard III, is currently on stage at the Argentina Theater: a project strongly supported by actress Maria Paiato, which is taking shape thanks to her collaboration with director Andrea Chiodi. This adaptation of the play sees Paiato play King Richard the Usurper, the cruel, evil, and Machiavellian man of power - a frequent protagonist of Elizabethan theater - in a performance of the leading male role by the Venetian actress, who aims to render the Bard's work as faithfully as possible to the original.

The tragedy, originally titled The Life and Death of King Richard III, is the last of four plays in William Shakespeare's minor tetralogy on English history: it concludes a dramatic narrative that began with Henry VI, Part One and continued with Henry VI, Part Two and Henry VI, Part Three. The entire tetralogy was composed toward the beginning of the Bard's career, between 1591 and 1592, dramatizing the historical events that had occurred about a century earlier when, at the end of the Wars of the Roses, the Plantagenets' power in England was replaced by the Tudor dynasty. These events, culminating in Richard's defeat at the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485, were well known to all Englishmen of Shakespeare's time, and audiences identified with the political factions represented on stage. At the centre of the play is the figure of the king, who, in his deformed physique, embodies an indomitable negative force, and his fidelity to his destiny, despite the character's cruelty, arouses an indisputable fascination.

Produced by the Brescia Theatre Centre, the National Theater of Genoa, the Biondo Theater of Palermo, and the Rome Theater – National Theater.

With Maria Paiato, Riccardo Bocci, Tommaso Cardarelli, Francesca Ciocchetti, Ludovica D’Auria, Giovanna Di Rauso, Giovanni Franzoni, Igor Horvat, Emiliano Masala, Cristiano Moioli, Lorenzo Vio, and Carlotta Viscovo. Reduction and adaptation by Angela Dematté.

Photo: Laila Pozzo