“What do you do when you have a terminal illness? When you only have a certain amount of time left to you?” These are the questions that animate a new adaptation of Shakespeare’s Richard III, in which the title character, like the actor who plays him, has motor neurone disease (MND) and uses a wheelchair.
I am speaking to that actor, Michael Patrick, and the play’s director, Oisín Kearney, during a break in rehearsals at Belfast’s Lyric theatre, ahead of opening night. For the pair, who wrote the adaptation together, the answers to those core questions inform the whole play. “In Richard’s case,” says Patrick, “he tries to become king.”
The tale of how he does that – through murder, deceit and betrayal – is one of theatre’s most compelling narratives. That it is so well known allowed Kearney and Patrick to maintain its defining characteristics – the machiavellian scheming, the intrigue, and Richard’s position as the archetypal antihero – while reimagining it as a unique production. “It was like: what’s important to the story? What’s the story we want to tell that exists within Richard III?” Patrick says. He and Kearney decided that they wanted to explore the role disability itself performs in the play, and how it shapes Richard’s character.
Somewhat surprisingly, given Richard is one of the few obviously disabled characters in the theatrical canon (he is traditionally portrayed with a hunched back), the production marks the first time he has been played by a wheelchair-using actor on the island of Ireland. Patrick became a wheelchair user only recently, but is using this experience to inform his interpretation of his character. “I’m not sure it has changed my understanding of the play,” he says, adding: “What it has allowed me to do is put my unique spin on it. No two versions of disability are the same. I’ve only been a wheelchair user for about a year, and my disease is progressive, which is a very different experience to someone who has had to use a wheelchair for most of their life, or someone whose condition is mostly stable. Anyone who acts in a Shakespeare production is always looking for a unique take on their character, and being recently disabled has helped me find the version of the character I want to portray.”
Indeed, it was Patrick’s recent MND diagnosis that led to the play taking shape. When he shared news about his health on Instagram last July, he quipped that his “limp is really authentic right now” and presented a list of roles he would therefore be perfect for. One was Richard (another more tongue-in-cheek suggestion was Tiny Tim from A Christmas Carol). Patrick freely admits that he didn’t expect a job to come through social media, but, he explained in a later Instagram post, “Jimmy Fay at the Lyric immediately messaged me asking if I was serious about Richard III. I got together with my longtime creative partner Oisín and we came up with a concept and pitched it to the Lyric. Thankfully Jimmy liked our idea and gave us a slot.” Patrick would get his post-diagnosis wish.
Patrick and Kearney have worked together for years, including on several theatre projects and a BBC Three adaptation of a play they wrote together called My Left Nut. “We’ve always wanted to do a Shakespeare production together,” Patrick says. “He’s also a very good friend; he was a groomsman at my wedding.” When it came to this production of Richard, that was important: “There’s no one I’d trust more.”
Patrick and Kearney are keenly aware of their responsibility to get this moment right, to portray disability accurately and make Richard a more well-rounded character than he has sometimes been. “There’s a tradition of showing Richard as this kind of evil villain,” says Patrick. “And it’s almost like his villainy is represented by the fact that he’s in a wheelchair or disabled. You know, he does horrible things, but he does them out of his own choice, rather than because of the fact that he’s in a wheelchair. It’s a bit more interesting and dramatic that way.”
Some of the changes were small, but crucial to making this version of the story feel authentic. “In the original text, Richard is disabled from birth,” Patrick says, “but one of the things we’ve done is we’ve tweaked it a little bit so that he has a new diagnosis of MND, like myself. So it just means tweaking certain words. In the opening speech he normally says: ‘Deformed, unfinished, sent into this breathing world before my time.’ We’ve changed that so it’s: ‘Deformed, finished, to be sent out of this breathing world before my time.’ So it’s small things like that, but it’s allowed us to alter the angle on the piece.”
With their keen awareness of how disability is portrayed and the stereotypes they wanted to avoid, were they worried that the audience would interpret the “tragedy” to be Richard’s disability? “It’s a tragedy because everyone dies,” Patrick says, laughing. But he understands the issue: “It’s less about the disability being the tragedy, and it’s more about people’s reaction to the disability being a tragedy, if that makes sense. Because, you know, in an ideal world, Richard could be in a wheelchair and he could still do all the things he wants to do.”
Kearney says that the script was written to emphasise that all the tragedy is of Richard’s own making. “I always interpret a tragedy as when someone can’t change, and that leads to their demise. With Richard, he’s so obsessed with the crown and so wrapped up in that. He could have made different choices. And he could have kept all of his brothers alive, and he could have lived a really, really good life. But he chooses to kill them all, and those choices lead him to being alone. It’s not just about him being disabled. It’s also about anyone with power, the choices that they make, whether they do love or hate.”
The script’s emphasis on choices and deliberate action is echoed in Patrick and Kearney’s decision to produce the play in the most accessible and inclusive way. Patrick and Zak Ford-Williams are full-time wheelchair users, while Paula Clarke, who plays Tyrell, is deaf and communicates with sign language.
The cast and crew have all had to find new ways to work together, “like how to make sure Paula got her cues,” says Patrick, “but it’s only leading to really rich conversations about the piece. Because obviously I can talk about the annoyances of being in a wheelchair now, but Zak can bring in things that happened when he was child, when he was in school. It’s great to get those different perspectives. It’s just really fun as well as different. I think any time you’re in a room with people with different life experiences, it always helps and always brings something new to the table.”
It is still rare to see productions that involve multiple disabled actors, and the pair credit the Lyric with doing the work to make it possible. The theatre’s relatively new building means it is already quite accessible, and Patrick, Ford-Williams and Clarke have been invited to make suggestions about any improvements that could be made. It’s this proactive approach, being willing to get things wrong and change them, that has made a difference, Patrick and Kearney say. Kearney says that often the biggest barrier is funding: it does cost more to put in accommodations for disabled actors. But that shouldn’t be used as an excuse.
“It’s probably been too easy in the past to say that it’s too expensive. We need theatre that is going to reflect society.” The Lyric decided to make one night of its run of A Midsummer Night’s Dream a fundraiser for Richard, and used the money raised to pay for a BSL interpreter for Clarke and accessible accommodation for Ford-Williams. It was a great way of doing things but, Kearney says, there needs to be more arts funding, with more of it earmarked to “incentivise hiring actors and musicians and people who maybe haven’t had a crack at the job because they’re seen as too expensive.” Patrick says that while funding is key, attitudes also need to change. He is insistent that casting directors should be willing to place disabled actors in roles that weren’t specifically written as disabled. “There’s no reason why I couldn’t play Benedick [in Much Ado About Nothing],” he says, as if he’s challenging the industry to make it happen. He admits that the lack of opportunities for disabled actors wasn’t something he had thought about before becoming a wheelchair user, “although I probably should have. For me, it’s not really about being ‘pigeonholed’ into certain roles,” he points out, “it’s the lack of roles across the entire industry. I’m an actor. I want to work. It’s hard enough to get cast without having another barrier in place.”
Kearney and Patrick believe change is coming to the stage (they point to the success of The Little Big Things, a musical about becoming disabled, in London’s West End). But at the end of the day, Kearney says, theatre is a business and “the best way to get accessibility and diversity on stages is for audiences to support it” – to turn out and see shows that put disabled performers front and centre. Hopefully, Belfast’s theatregoers will do just that, and enjoy this smart, powerful retelling of Richard III. Perhaps a play about one man’s terrible choices will allow the theatre industry to make better ones.
The Tragedy of Richard III is at the Lyric theatre, Belfast, 12 October to 10 November.
