Newsflash! Forget the Olympics for just a second. Mark Rylance is back at the Globe. Let the bells ring out! He’s been away seven years but his successor as artistic director, Dominic Dromgoole, has wisely wooed him back - for there is none in England who can hold this hallowed stage so well. Rylance belongs here much as a bird does in the sky or a fish the sea. He’s in his element.
Tickets for Twelfth Night, in which he reprises his hauntingly delicate and grave performance as Olivia, are long gone but apparently - and amazingly - there still remain chances to see him as Richard III. Perhaps we have the recent terrible weather, now made glorious summer, to thank for that. If you can face the prospect of standing for two and a half hours plus, then do. Both productions transfer to the West End but there’s nothing like getting up close and personal to see what the fuss is about. In the case of Rylance’s subtle take on the grasping Gloucester, I suspect the nearer you get the richer you’ll find the experience.
Whether or not the terrible sudden death of his step-daughter Nataasha van Kampen earlier this month - which caused him to drop out of the 2012 opening ceremony - has steeped his performance in a greater than usual aura of vulnerability, there’s a quiet sadness about Rylance that lends melancholy even to the villain's clowning aspect. This Richard limps badly, has a halting, tremulous delivery, lets loose nervous laughs, roars madly. Here’s no grandstanding Machiavellian grotesque with pronounced hunchback or menacing crutches in the Antony Sher mould but the pitiful runt of the Yorkist litter. The look is more Stan Laurel than Laurence Olivier. A withered left-hand rests fixed across his chest but the deformity is felt most keenly within. This Richard doesn’t try to compensate for his weaknesses, he plays on them to manipulate others - but his self-loathing undoes him when he seizes the crown.
On the one hand the gentleness lets us see how Richard stoops to conquer. Whether it’s Liam Brennan’s trusting brother Clarence or the brazenly wooed widow Lady Anne - played with elegant restraint by a male actor, Johnny Flynn, in keeping with all the female roles - the apparent sincerity of the rogue is hugely seductive. Still, it wouldn’t hurt to have more contrast, a sharper killer edge. Tim Carroll’s period-costumed “original practices” production is fleet-footed - the text has been ruthlessly pruned back - but with no ostentatious directorial angle, the procession of political intrigues verges on being clear but rather colourless.
And yet to sympathise with Richard, to care for him when he lies sprawled - after rising briefly in mortal agony at Bosworth, that’s still quite something isn’t it? Refreshing, challenging, bold in its way. And accompanied by a fine ensemble, to have Rylance back doing what he does best - Shakespeare - that’s a crowning glory of the summer‘s theatre, say what you like.
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