SOURCE: Mitchell, Elvis. Review of Richard II. New York Times (27 July 2001): B21, E22.

In the following review, Mitchell finds little merit in director John Farrell's modern-dress, ninety-minute filmed version of Richard II, emphasizing weak individual performances and a lack of directorial vision.

John Farrell's film adaptation of Richard II features a group of actors cowed by the breadth of material that calls for performers to float on the martial breathiness of the dialogue. A recent Signet version of the play includes an essay by the scholar Richard D. Altick, in which he quotes Walter Pater's assessment: “It belongs to a small group of plays, where, by happy birth and consistent evolution, dramatic form approaches to something like the unity of a lyrical ballad, a lyric, a song, a single strain of music.”

All we get in this filmed version of Richard II is the strain with performers gasping...