“Richard III” – 1973

Review Excerpts

“KIM CAPTURES CENTER STAGE IN ‘UNEVEN’ ‘RICHARD III’ Shakespeare’s ‘Richard III’ is a star vehicle, and the undoubted star of this year’s Champlain Shakespeare Festival, Randy Kim, is the lead….Kim’s acting range and nuance in creating his portrait of this hypnotic and powerful tyrant held center stage at the Arena Theater all night….Randy Kim’s Richard was dramatically interesting at every turn, and he made a good case for the development from an incredulous Richard with the world playing into his hands to the maddened tyrant, obsessed with his waning power. The wooing of Lady Anne…is a virtually impossible scene; but this Richard brought it off wonderfully. Kim combined his off-hand manner with a perverse sexuality. Also, in Richard’s meditations after his coronation Kim showed an impressive darkening of character…this was a masterful job of acting…the play should be seen both for Randy Kim’s Richard and for a number of dramatically provocative ideas in the production.”
               –Tom Simone, BURLINGTON FREE PRESS (8/20/1973)

“Randy Kim, the brilliant young Korean actor in the title role has transformed his boyish face into an image of malignity without caricature. Richard is a real man, deformed in body, ruthless and cruel, who almost wins by using every device the world rejects to get power….Kim constructed his character on a carefully conceived series of satisfactions, each more imposing than the last, in which love is a device for power and the real emotional life of the man is based on hate….He dies unrepentant, a fully realized personality.”
               –William Gilbert, BENNINGTON BANNER (8/25/1973)

“’RICHARD III’ AN EXCITING TALE OF WOE AND FOE….Randy Kim carries his great reputation from A Midsummer Night’s Dream through his performance as Richard. His facial expressions are fantastically disciplined and he easily establishes the rapport that his character must make with the audience. His power with words earns him a position of great stature even before he begins to reveal his villainous character. He portrays Shakespeare’s anti-hero who greatly believes in his own immortality as a human fantastic. As the play progresses Richard begins to fall apart and in the end painfully realizes that he is very human and very fallible….This play is a shining star of all the Shakespeare productions that I have seen….”
               –Joseph Olshan, VERMONT CYNIC (9/20/1973)

“…the whole character was more powerful than before. The opening speeches were commanding, and Richard’s control over his victims more hypnotic as in the wooing of Lady Anne. Late in the play Kim gave the besieged Richard heroic stature in his anger against the approaching rebels, and in the speech after the nightmare he revealed the tormented devil in the king. On the whole Kim got more help from his supporting cast than before….The thread of continuity is Randy Kim’s Richard, but the surrounding context is now more convincing than at the opening of the run.”
               –Tom Simone, BURLINGTON FREE PRESS (9/7/1973)