Richard III, 1990, National Theatre, London; Ian McKellan as Richard III.

Page 1.F. Richard III: Director, Richard Eyre; Designer Bob Crowley; Photographer, Donald Cooper; National Theatre, July 1990. (ahds.ac.uk/performingarts).
"Bob Crowley's design gives us a darkling plain, alternately nightmarish (in this most nightmare-obsessed of plays) and Kafkaesque; all space and blackness from which march storm-troopers by torchlight and a platform draped with the banner of St George glides on bearing the jackbooted demagogue; an emptiness, like an empty soul, ready to be filled by the first opportunist." Martin Hoyle, Financial Times 27.7.90.Opening Date: 25 July 1990, Theatre: Lyttelton.

This production achieved a remarkable transposition of the play's setting to an England of the Nineteen-Thirties succombing to Fascism, though this scene is costumed in sumptuous civilian clothes. HMR