Performed at The Cockpit, July 2026
Reviewed by Mim Harrild
Nicholás Pérez Costa's reimagining of Richard III opens on a stage strewn with ladders and vats of ambiguous contents—perhaps oil, perhaps radioactive waste. Before a word is spoken, the audience is plunged into a post-apocalyptic dystopia, realised within the Cockpit's thrust configuration. It's an immediately evocative image: bleak, industrial and unstable, suggesting a world where survival has long since replaced civilisation.
Without warning, the stage erupts into movement. A high- octane ensemble of eleven performers flood the space, clad in striking steampunk-inspired costumes of leather, cloaks and cabaret clown make-up infused with pagan mysticism. Their collective physicality is exceptional. Moving with remarkable complicité, they writhe and shift like a single poisoned organism, programmed only to endure within this barren, nihilistic landscape. There are unmistakable echoes of the scavenging tribes in Mad Max: Fury Road, as the ensemble cling to one another, amplify each other's lines and feed off a shared energy; as though every word offers a brief escape or remedy from their collective decay. This sense of a society poisoned from within provides the foundation for Pérez Costa's interpretation of Richard of Gloucester himself.
If the ensemble embodies the effects of tyranny, then Richard—played with extraordinary physical commitment by performer-director Nicholás Pérez Costa—is its most corrupted inhabitant. Part queer cabaret performer, part dystopian despot, he appears in a leather corset that evokes both BDSM attire fused with a straitjacket, paired with breeches, boots, a spider fascinator and ‘Joker’-esque white face paint. Pérez Costa's extraordinarily expressive face gives Richard a volatile emotional range that is both magnetic and deeply unsettling. Using two crutches, Pérez Costa traverses the stage with startling versatility. They become extensions of Richard's body—tools for propulsion, intimidation, climbing and attack. His movement is animalistic, grotesque and distinctly arachnid, allowing him to stalk the space with unpredictable rhythms. Although Richard's disability shapes his physical vocabulary, it is rarely acknowledged by the other characters. This feels like a deliberate choice, presenting disability as simply part of this world's social fabric rather than a defining feature. Richard's tragedy lies then not in his disability but in the corruption of his mind, fuelled by rejection, resentment and an insatiable hunger for power. Pérez Costa externalises this deterioration through involuntary movements, vocal tics and disruptive interruptions to Shakespeare's iambic verse. These unsettling ruptures jar the audience while remaining almost invisible to those around Richard, reinforcing the sense that his madness has become internalised long before it erupts into violence.
The strength of the central performance is matched by several outstanding supporting turns. Tricia Hitchcock's Buckingham is especially compelling, combining natural delivery with a clear dramatic intention behind every line. Her performance builds steadily towards Buckingham's final monologue, in which the realisation of his impending death culminates in a haunting delivery of, "Why, then All-Souls' Day is my body's doomsday." The moment becomes one of the production's emotional high points, as Buckingham recognises that justice has arrived on the anniversary of a curse once laid upon him.
Juliet Prew is equally impressive across multiple roles — but it is as Queen Margaret that she leaves the deepest impression. She fully inhabits Margaret's grief, resolve, and vengeful fury, delivering her curses with formidable conviction. Her address to Queen Elizabeth—"I had an Edward, till a Richard killed him; I had a husband, till a Richard killed him… Richard yet lives, hell's black intelligencer"—is riveting, revealing Margaret as both prophet and survivor, driven by a grief that has hardened into righteous vengeance.
That intensity runs through the entire production. Visually, it is bold, inventive, and often breathtaking. At times, however, the production leans a little too heavily into its own theatricality, with its commitment to spectacle occasionally undermining the emotional storytelling just as the performances begin to draw us fully into the relationships onstage.
This tension is particularly evident in several of the death scenes. The world-building is so rich that you find yourself wishing the company trusted it just a little more. While the deaths are imaginatively staged, several end too abruptly to deliver their full emotional impact. The recurring use of blackouts and handheld flashlights effectively isolates the persecuted, evoking the claustrophobic terror of surviving beneath a violent dictatorship. The chase leading to each execution is gripping, keeping you on the edge of your seat, only for the deaths themselves to arrive suddenly and somewhat anticlimactically. Perhaps that is simply the macabre in me wanting to savour the full dramatic potential of each character's fate. Or perhaps it is because the production's fearless embrace of the play's darker themes encourages us to expect those moments to carry greater emotional weight.
Ironically, one of the evening's most affecting moments is also one of its simplest. Matthew Miles' King Edward dies with comparative restraint, communicating heartbreak through little more than a pleading gaze and quiet physical vulnerability. By holding back, he allows Shakespeare's text—and the reactions of the company around him—to carry the emotional weight. More moments like this, where the production trusted its performers over theatrical effects, would have made several other character arcs even more affecting.
Indeed, the production occasionally relies too heavily on relentless, dense sound design and theatrical tools to generate intensity that the performers themselves are already capable of sustaining. That same confidence is sometimes missing in the handling of Shakespeare's language. Pérez Costa's decision to frame the production through a "Bold Latin Vision" is one of its most exciting ideas. Shakespeare undoubtedly benefits from being heard through different cultural perspectives, accents and vocal traditions, each revealing fresh nuances within the verse. The challenge here lies not in the variety of accents, but occasional problems with articulation, projection and pace. In a play as linguistically dense as Richard III, there are moments when the text becomes difficult to follow. Even so, the company's flair for visual storytelling often bridges those gaps, allowing movement, image and composition to communicate what words occasionally cannot.
One of the production's strongest sequences comes during Richard's psychological unravelling before Bosworth. A metaphorical storm at sea is conjured through the elegant ensemble puppeteering of a white sheet and striking lighting, blurring the boundaries between memory, nightmare and supernatural visitation. As the ghosts return to haunt Richard, Pérez Costa's recorded voice repeats the refrain, "Richard loves Richard." The phrase becomes increasingly distorted and sinister, pulling the audience into Richard's fractured mind. We become witnesses to his self destruction, inhabiting the conscience that "has a thousand severed tongues": a thousand accusations, a thousand judgements and a thousand death wishes.
The production also incorporates a very welcome sense of humour and banality. Shakespeare’s tragedies are often at their richest when horror and comedy sit side by side, and this production understands that. A particular highlight sees the executioner wielding a cross fashioned from Richard's own crutches while disguised as a holy man—a brilliantly irreverent image that perfectly captures the production’s blend of brutality, satire, and theatrical invention.
This is an ambitious, visually arresting and frequently exhilarating interpretation of Richard III. Although greater textual clarity and a little more faith in moments of stillness would make its emotional impact even stronger, Pérez Costa has undoubtedly created an imaginative and distinctive production. Driven by exceptional ensemble work, inventive stagecraft, and a fearless central performance, it offers a compelling vision of Shakespeare's tragedy as a society rotting from within.
Mim from the bar
Mim works behind our bar, but is also a brilliant musician, actor and creative.
Fun Fact: Mim has been in two productions on our stage. She was in the cast of The Threepenny Opera - for which she received an Offie nomination, and she played Goldilocks in our family show Fairytale On Church Street.
other stage credits include: Rosalind in As You Like It (East London Shakespeare Festival), the Fairy Godmother in Sensory Cinders (Soho Place), Juliet in Romeo and Juliet (ELSF), Lady Macbeth in Macbeth (The Three Inch Fools, national tour), as well as repertory performances as Gwendolen in The Importance of Being Earnest and Hermia in A Midsummer Night’s Dream (OVO, The Roman Theatre).
RICHARD III by William Shakepeare
Directed, performed and produced by Nicholás Pérez Costa
@nicolasperezcosta
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