Madcap Villain

By T.E.Kalem

RICHARD III by William Shakespeare

A I Pacino ought to have sprouted a long, pointy mustache for his Richard III so he could twirl it. Returning to the stage for this limited engagement (through July 15) at Broadway's Cort Theater, the man who mumbled so effectively through two Godfathers on-screen turns Shakespeare's "bunch-back'd toad" into a smarmy caricature villain out of silent movies and old comic strips; he personifies the sort of dastard who forecloses the mortgage on the family farm and threatens the virtue of fair young damsels.

In Shakespearean terms, this interpretation is an unconscionable outrage, yet it leaves a vivid comic impression. What makes Pacino dreadfully wrong for the role enhances what is prickingly funny about the way he plays it. In social mobility, this young (39) actor has come a long way upward from The Bronx, but no one has been able to mouthwash The Bronx from his speech patterns. From moment to moment, his urban streetside inflection breaks up the house, deliberately. Pacino has insufficient breath control to carry a Shakespearean line, so he spits out the poetry and mars the imagery. He strikes just two vocal chords: one, the brawling ranter, the other the insinuative little-boy whiner. Furthermore, he tends to lisp. Toward the end of the play, when Richard's fortunes are abysmally low, he asks one of his few loyal allies: "Will our friends pwoove all twoo?"

Pacino commits the cardinal sin of the actor by playing directly and shamelessly to the audience, even to the point of facial telegraphy with broad smirks, grins and grimaces. It is an attention-getting device for securing the playgoers' sympathy. As a result, the corrupt ambition and awful malignity of Richard are whittled away, and he appears as no more than a roguish prankster.

The whole enterprise has been directed like a five-alarm fire by David Wheeler, so that the dynamics of action and the definition of character are lost. One exception is the scene in which Richard woos Lady Anne (Penelope Allen) in the presence of the shrouded corpse of her father-in-law, Henry VI, whom Richard has murdered, as he has her husband. Here Pacino slows the jigging pace and his own manic mockery to make effective use of his macho sex appeal. This is not to propose that he next put Romeo and Juliet on his hit list.

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