One of the advantages of being stuck at home is the opportunity to sample new dramatic forms streamed into you home and this production by The Giddy Road Theatre company is a lovely example of a production that you might otherwise not see except is some small venue at the Edinburgh Festival and yet it proves to be an entertaining, imaginative, and accessible dip into Shakespeare.
Taking as inspiration Shakespeare’s 1595 play Richard II loosely based on the historic events from the murder of the Duke of Gloucester to the King’s abdication and death, the play is set in the cell at Pomfret Castle where the king is imprisoned and will shortly die at the hands of his guard. In Shakespeare’s play, Richard compares his prison cell to a world peopled with his thoughts and says, “thus in one person play many persons” and these provide the inspiration for “This Little World”. Richard accepts defeat easily and wallows in self-pity when he gives up the crown.
