Smith Street Stage brings the cult-classic historical Shakespeare play, “Richard II,” to the Mark O’Donnell Theater on Schermerhorn Street. The play wrestles with themes of politics, power and identity, which the cast and crew described as particularly apt for an election year. 

“Richard II” is about King Richard II’s power struggle with his cousin and rival Henry Bolingbroke, as well as outside reactions to the royal family. The characters confront the fragility and temporal nature of power, along with the shifting emotions involved in politics. William Shakespeare wrote the play around 1595 as part of his historical series which illustrated English politics beginning in the medieval era. 

Jonathan Hopkins is the artistic director and co-founder of Smith Street Stage along with his wife, Beth Anne Leone. Smith Street Stage began with free, publicly accessible Shakespeare plays in Carroll Park 14 years ago. 

“The thing we noticed when we started doing our shows in Carroll Park was that people responded to the plays and that our approach to the plays, which puts a lot of emphasis on character and psychology and human interaction, is something that audiences respond to,” said Hopkins. “Once we saw the way people responded, we found that we had a certain kind of success. There’s something about it that is accessible, without simplifying, and it allows people to identify themselves in the plays and familiar situations and dilemmas without us dumbing down the plays or removing their inherent complexity.”

Now, Smith Street Stage is expanding to perform indoors with bigger casts, broader technical and design opportunities and to a different audience. Hopkins noted that when performing in the park, people would often stumble onto the plays on the way home from work or exiting the train. In contrast, performances in a theater require tickets and intentional attendance. 

“Carroll Park is a great space because there’s a very low bar of entry for people. People who may not seek out a Shakespeare play come to our shows because we’re there, but it’s a loud space and a space over which we have no technical control,” said Hopkins. “We can’t have a blackout, we can’t have a stage whisperer. We can’t have a quiet piece of music playing in the background. It has its own energy and its own fun, but the reason that we go inside is because there are certain of Shakespeare’s plays, or certain ways of making them, that require more technical artistry. We’ll always do Carroll Park. That is our home. The thing we’re trying to do in the Mark O’Donnell may have moments of greater subtlety and a little more technical variety.”

“Richard II” is an example of one of Smith Street Stage’s indoor plays that requires more subtlety and artistic deftness to resonate with the audience. Though most Shakespeare fans are familiar with the play, it is rarely performed, and many have not experienced it live. 

Director Katie Willmorth pitched the play for the fall 2024 season, anticipating the presidential election season and the many complicated experiences, questions and thoughts that people have around topics of leadership and power.

“I suggested this play partly because I knew Smith Street had not done it yet, and I think it’s a very good play that is not produced often, which I don’t know why, given how good it is. I was excited about the possibility of working on a play with so much potential, and for a lot of our audience, it might be the first time they’re interacting with that story,” said Willmorth. “I felt very aware that we were going to be in an election cycle this year, and that always seems to bring a constant sense of searching and anxiety and a feeling that there’s an urgent moment in history that seems to be unfolding. This play, while not about a democratic election, is about the royal family of England in the medieval period but the characters have a similar level of concern about what’s going on with our personal lives and what’s going on with our politics.”

Theo McKenna, who plays King Richard II, noted the excitement around performing in a rarely-produced play that wrestles with complicated themes through complex technique: the play is entirely in iambic pentameter.

“I’d always wanted to play Richard II, but thought it might not happen, because this play is not often produced. What’s exciting about it is this play is entirely written in verse, the iambic pentameter, with no breaks of prose, which is an exciting challenge to take that on,” said McKenna. “The verse gives so much information and can be overwhelming. As an actor and production, we have to get on this train together and let it flow. My part in that is to show the audience Richard’s journey with openness and clarity. It’s allowing the language and the truth of this larger-than-life figure to live out through me and connect with the audience.”

The play addresses politics and power in a way that doesn’t connect with American politics directly but rather addresses the experiences of people witnessing history and politics. The play relies heavily on its characters to convey its message.

“‘Richard II’ doesn’t cleanly graft onto like a framework of American left versus right; you’re not able to say that Richard II is Biden, or he’s Trump, or he’s Kamala Harris or whomever else,” Hopkins said. “It becomes a play in which we invite the audience to examine how personality, power and patriotism intersect, without the audience being able to cleanly identify who on stage would be a Democrat and who on stage would be a Republican.” 

Willmorth described why this political play is particularly relevant to modern political culture. 

“We’ve been talking about how power plays out in public. There are a lot of scenes in this play that feel like they’re happening with a sense of ‘people are going to know about this,’ or ‘this is being recorded for history,’ where it’s literally in public. It feels like the characters have a sense that the decisions they make, the choices they make or the words they say are being broadcast wider than only the individuals in the room,” said Willmorth. “That feels like something we’re privy to all the time, wanting to know how our leaders think about things. What do they say? Who are they meeting with? We look to these things as signs of what kind of leaders are going to be.”

Hopkins noted that in a recent run-through of the play, he experienced some reactions that he hopes audiences will also experience. 

“I hope audiences find themselves thinking about our politics or their participation in it differently, or they find that it bears on the conversations and the thoughts that they’re already having,” said Hopkins.”The things I took away from the run-through is that a lot of people make difficult decisions that they think are going to be good for their country. I had sympathy for many of the characters on stage, even characters whose actions were mistaken, or who I thought were poor leaders, I found sympathetic.”

Willmorth agreed that the audiences will see the characters with more empathy, and hopes that the empathy learned from the show will translate to modern politics and culture. 

“I hope we can surprise people. I hope people who know the play feel surprised by our telling of it. I hope people that don’t know the play are excited to watch it unfold and surprised by the twists and turns that it takes,” said Willmorth. “I hope people can have their empathy awakened. Ultimately, this play is a tragedy about someone losing the one thing about their identity that they always felt sure of. Even if you think Richard wasn’t the best king, watching another person try to grapple with who they are outside of the one thing that they felt sure about is very heart-wrenching.”

Smith Street Stage has been based in Brooklyn for over a decade, and the cast and crew keep Brooklynites in mind when preparing productions. McKenna noted that performing in one’s city can be challenging and exciting. 

“Bringing it to your city and your audience right now, especially with the history plays, is always interesting because it feels like it’s a play about a time that was written to speak to the time in which it was written,” said McKenna. “For us, it’s like, okay, that’s all very fun to know and great bar trivia, but we have to show our city and fellow New Yorkers and Brooklynites what this is about. You don’t lie to your fellow city dwellers, so that adds an exciting challenge.”

Willmorth added, “My goal with Shakespeare is always for people who think they know the play to be surprised by it, and I want people who think they might not be able to connect to a Shakespeare history to realize that it’s so for them.”

Smith Street Stage will perform “Richard II” at the Mark O’Donnell Theater from Sept. 11-28, 2024. Tickets are available on the Smith Street Stage website.