A compelling but unheroic Richard

Thanks to some mistake of history, Shakespeare’s Richard II has never quite been recognised as one of those roles against which the great actors are measured.

But it takes a virtuoso to bring Richard to life: like all the toughest roles, he’s a heap of contradictions out of which only the most talented actors can construct a consistent man. We despise him in the first half and then weep with him in the second. He’s a decadent and incompetent king but, once deposed, he becomes an introspective tragic hero, a cousin of Hamlet.

Against this challenge, newly minted film star Eddie Redmayne never quite finds the dignity needed to make Richard truly heroic. He excels as the young king drunk with entitlement yet shaking with insecurity but this nervy Richard never quite becomes contemplative enough to make the final scenes courageous: the hands never stop twitching, the grandiose gestures never calm.