Red Bull Theater’s inventive new production of Shakespeare’s “Richard II” stars Emmy-nominee Michael Urie, in a thoughtful and modern update of the history play. Urie is dazzling and captivating as the vain, impulsive, and capricious monarch—and his performance is complemented by the show’s original and stylish concept.
Adapted and directed by Craig Baldwin, Richard’s court is reimagined in the glittering world of 1980s New York. It is a kingdom fueled by ambition, cutthroat politics, celebrity—and 80s bangers, like the Eurythmics “Sweet Dreams.” By setting the play in this era and its fervent scramble for influence, Baldwin highlights how image and power collide, giving Shakespeare’s story a vivid new relevancy and deepening the play’s themes of identity, mortality, and the fragility of authority.
Baldwin joined us for a Q&A to discuss his inspiration in bringing this show and this concept to the stage in 2025.
How did you become involved with Red Bull and this project?
“Richard II” has been an obsession of mine ever since I acted in a production at Classic Stage Company 16 years ago. Jump ahead 6 years and I was Associate Artistic Director at Red Bull Theater where I workshopped a production as part of the company’s artistic development programs. Right after that I went to work for Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington and, jump forward another 5 years, I was directing a production of “Hamlet”featuring Michael Urie. We immediately vowed to work together again, Michael said he had always wanted to play Richard, and we have been working on making it happen ever since. So it has been many years in the making!
Why did you feel it was important to stage this play now?
This is a play about leadership, greed, and corruption, exploring huge political and social shifts in a country as a new regime takes over. Does that sound familiar now…?
In addition to directing, you adapted the script. What were your goals with the adaptation?
One of the challenges of presenting “Richard II” in America is the enormous amount of medieval English history and lineage represented in the play. There are a lot of characters, and it is assumed you’ll understand by their strange names and titles who they are and how they are related. Maybe that still works in England, but it is a very niche audience member who can follow that in America. I really wanted the play to talk about America now. Shakespeare wrote the play to talk about his Elizabethan times, not the medieval history where it is set. He was talking about the power, greed, corruption and turmoil in Queen Elizabeth’s court (after watching the play, she famously said “Know ye not, I am Richard!”) By combining and removing characters I could shake off some of the dusty medieval history from the play and reveal the real story at the core, which is about this King and his journey from having all the wealth and power in the world to having the abject nothingness of a prison cell.
A big lynchpin of the adaptation for me was moving Richard’s famous speech from the prison cell to the top of the play: “I have been studying how I may compare this prison where I live unto the world.” He is trying to make sense of that empty prison cell, in comparison to all the things he used to have, all the people that used to surround him. Framing the play like this makes it a memory play – all the scenes come alive in his mind in his prison cell, and he is able to re-experience all these moments of his life that lead him there. It was a very clarifying structure for the story.
Emily Swallow, David Mattar Merten, Grantham Coleman, Michael Urie, and Lux Pascal. Photo by Carol Rosegg.
What inspired you to set “Richard II” in this time period?
Shakespeare wrote the play as a prequel to his enormous games of thrones project that we call “The War of the Roses”. He wrote a large chunk of his plays – “Henry IV Part 1 & 2,” “Henry V,” “Henry VI Parts 1, 2 & 3,” and “Richard III” – to chronicle this generational civil war that took over his country. Thinking about America’s current state of division that feels almost on the brink of civil war, I asked myself ‘what was the prequel to this American moment? When did this division, greed, corruption, and incivility begin?’ To me that was the 1980s. It was the “greed is good” era of insider trading, rampant privatisation of public assets, and trickle-down economics. The 80s began the fetishisation of wealth and individualism, of style over substance, of celebrities and real-estate developers. It was the rise of Trump and Roy Cohn.
On top of all that, Richard was historically a queer king, even though they didn’t have the language for it. All the evidence points to his homosexuality. In the play, Shakespeare hints at in language about his effeminacy or the way he is a slave to the latest fashions from Italy… It’s all coded, but it’s there. In the 1980s we could make this much more overt and talk about queer leaders and queer relationship to power. Not to mention, I could realistically switch some of the characters to women in the 1980s and talk a little about women’s relationship to politics and power.
Oh, and the 80s has great music, great clothes, and great hair!
Michael Urie and David Mattar Merten. Photo by Carol Rosegg.
Can you talk about Michael as an actor? What was it about him that you felt would be right for Richard? What did Michael bring to the part that was different than prior “Richard II” actors?
Richard uses his wit as a weapon. He doesn’t battle with brute strength, he is not that kind of leader, but he runs circles around everyone with his smarts. Michael is absolutely whip-smart and also very, very funny.
The role is often played as sort of distant and aloof, or distracted, but I never thought this was the full picture. I saw an opportunity with Michael to instead craft a brilliantly disruptive (queer!) leader; someone who destroys with words instead of with a gun.
One of the questions the play is exploring is “what makes a good leader?” and I think the traditional answer in the play is Bolingbroke is a better leader because he commands with strength and righteousness. By the end of the play, however, Bolingbroke’s reign is based entirely on brute force; his people are having all his enemies murdered on his behalf. Is that a good use of power?
People who know Michael from television comedy perhaps don’t know his incredible skill with language. Richard speaks some of the most extraordinary and complicated speeches written in the English language and I knew Michael could make those sentences dance with precision, clarity, and a generous dollop of humour.
This production is the inaugural show at the new Astor Place Theater. Can you talk about staging this show in such an intimate space?
The Astor is very intimate. It was so perfect that I wanted to conceive of the story from the point of view of Richard’s prison cell, looking back over his memories and re-constructions of how he got there. The stage was already like a little prison cell. I also wanted Richard to very much be able to collude with the audience in looking back at these scenes. The intimacy allows for that relationship. Richard is able to simply throw a look to the crowd when something particularly heinous is said about him, or reach directly into the crowd’s hearts when his dear ones are murdered.
The night I went, the audience, particularly the younger ones, seemed to really connect with the material. Do you feel that the concept for the production facilitated a way into the play for people who may not be as familiar with Shakespeare?
It’s very gratifying to hear that. Michael texts me to tell me when he meets people from the audience who are seeing Shakespeare for the first time and saying things like “I never knew it could be something I would understand and enjoy.” It is a bit of a mission for Michael and myself to uncover all the beauty and brilliance we see in Shakespeare for new audiences, and to do away with all of the elitist baggage that is weighing it down. We want our aunts and uncles who never even see theatre to love it. The concept for the production was definitely designed to facilitate that. It’s very much Shakespeare, his language is what makes it great, and a lot of hardcore Shakespeare enthusiasts have told me that the production brought new depths to their understanding of the play, but Shakespeare’s plays were populist entertainment were written for large, diverse audiences. We are thrilled to be again treating Richard II as a play for everyone.
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“Richard II” runs through December 21, 2025 at the Astor Place Theater in NYC. For tickets and information, visit redbulltheater.com.
