Photos by William Douglas Ganslen
Review Excerpts
“’A BIZARRE TRAVESTY OF ‘KING RICHARD III’….Portraying the deformed , villainous Richard is Randall Duk Kim, a compelling and accomplished Korean-American actor, whose effectiveness is sharply curtailed by Ball’s baroque staging. Kim, for example, must signal Richard’s determination ‘to dream upon the crown’ by stretching toward the symbolic sculptured crown….jump up and swing from it.… We are privileged, in any event, to have the unusually talented Kim in ACT. He won high acclaim with the New York Shakespeare Festival. And his commanding presence in the role of the tyrant-king gives Ball’s production a powerful lift….”
–Stanley Eichelbaum, SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER (October 14, 1974)
“‘ACT’S ‘RICHARD III’ OUTRAGEOUS MELODRAMA’….Richard is the core of the play, and Randall Duk Kim makes him a cunning, wonderfully menacing political despot….In the long first act especially, Kim is hypnotic as drums and other sound effects emphasize the lines that delineate this ‘excellent grand tyrant of the earth.’ Ball’s second act…is less effective. The Battle of Bosworth Field is suggested in choreography. But the dance of death performed by Richard and Henry, Earl of Richmond (scantily garbed as the white knight force for reform) is showy rather than emphatic…. Richmond, young and pale, never musters the authority to crack the audience’s fascination with, and strange affinity for, the strong, scheming, tragic monster king….”
–William Hogan, SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE (10/14/1974)
“’BRILLIANT ACTOR IN ACT’S ‘RICHARD’….Randall Duk Kim is the best young actor to be seen in the Bay Area in years. He has great technique, a fine voice, commanding stage presence. He is a fine actor now and may well be a great one. He gives a bravura performance in the title role of Shakespeare’s ‘Richard III’…. Duk Kim is brilliant in the role from his first appearance up through a trap door in the center of the stage like some grotesque lobster crawling out of the sea, to his command of the stage and ceiling when he swings above the shoulders of his courtiers and hangs onto the crown-shaped chandelier high above the stage. He never made us aware of his technique; he simply was what he was…. the production should be seen if for no other reason than to say that you saw Randall Duk Kim when he first played here.”
–Barbara Bladen, SAN MATEO TIMES (10/14/1974)
“TOO MANY DISTRACTIONS MAR ACT’S ‘RICHARD’….Randall Duk Kim, a young actor, made an impressive debut in the title role…. Richard is a self-proclaimed villain, glorying in his virtuosity, on the way up if not on the way down, when fear has entered him. Kim, a twisted Crookback, can assume a bland expression, or distortions of rage, but always the eyes are hard and cold…. Richard’s dissembling virtuosity reaches its height in his pose with a prayer book before the duped citizens, a glimpse of humor in Kim’s portrayal. In his wooing of Anne over the dead body of the husband he has murdered, an extraordinary force—sexual and domineering—emanates from him, until she is hypnotized, helpless….”
–Dorothy Nichols, PALO ALTO TIMES (10/14/1974)
“COURT JESTER….King Richard III squirms out of a trapdoor onto the stage, crawls down to the audience like a crippled animal, and plainly reveals his determination to spend the next five acts of the play as a villain….This Richard, played by Randall Duk Kim, is grotesque—but no more than any one else in the loathsome atmosphere created onstage at the Geary….In the midst of this black world, Kim’s Richard is disarming with simplicity and honesty about his murderous intent. Kim is no fool when he slips into his most difficult scenes, Richard’s seduction of Lady Anne (Hope Alexander-Willis) beside her husband’s coffin, and his wooing of Princess Elizabeth, whose brothers he has murdered, through her mother (Elizabeth Cole). Both scenes, usually unworkable, are electrifying….”
–Robert Taylor, OAKLAND TRIBUNE (10/15/1974)
“…Randall Duk Kim, a new talent, did everything he could to save his portrayal of Richard from the production. He centered it around Richard’s sexual appetite, a Richard ‘not shap’d for sport…not made to court,’ wanting ‘love’s majesty to strut before a wanton ambling nymph.’ But even these attempts were lost under Ball’s weird direction….”
–Blake A. Samson, INDEPENDENT-JOURNAL (10/15/1974)
“…Despite the director, Randall Duk Kim enacts a stunning. Misshapen, slyly malevolent Kim occupies the myriad roles Richard plays with consummate artistry. He woos ardently, pleads eloquently, reigns viciously. One wishes only that his soliloquies were pitched at a more self mocking tone; Kim has missed Richard’s remarkable awareness of self and society. Throughout most of the evening the only arresting figure on stage is Kim.”
–L.A.K., BERKELEY GAZETTE (10/16/1974)
“A VISIONARY ‘RICHARD III’….For the title role, however, Ball chose perfectly. He imported Randall Duk Kim from the inscrutable East, where Kim was a featured player with Joseph Papp’s New York Shakespeare Festival. Kim delivers all the untampered malignancy Ball could have hoped for. He orchestrates the macabre dance of death in twisted posture, limping atop a hugely built-up black boot and twisting beneath a massively deformed left shoulder. Leering, mocking, railing at his own ill-fortune and his rivals’ threats to his ambitions, this Richard is an awesome man. Kim’s portrayal magnifies Richard’s tactical genius, his ability to be subtle, to deceive, to persuade, as well as to stab at the heart of a challenge. It is a memorable tour-de-force….”
–Leo Stutzin, MODESTO BEE (10/16/1974)
“…Richard has to be the world’s most hated villain, on top of being one who blatantly informs his audience that he is going to be one, and this makes him a difficult character with which to convince an audience. Randall Duk Kim does it. He is young and at times could use a shade more polish, but he plays the misshapen Plantagenet with solid evil shading into black humor. He himself almost laughs at his own preposterous schemes. His power overshadows the entire production….”
–Karl Barron, PACIFIC SUN (10/17-23/1974)
“’DARK, SATANIC ‘RICHARD III’’…. As Richard, played by Randall Duk Kim, begins the play with insecure, warped mind, no character psychology could be stressed. The gusto with which Richard executes his deadly child-like games was perfectly brought out by Kim, his ‘charming’ wit was there, as well as some real pity when he says that no soul shall pity his death. The audience can find some sympathy for Richard when all the other characters are garish hypocrites, written and portrayed as bold strokes of a diseased society where no one has a good tongue or a real heart….”
–Adrienne Lane, DAILY CALIFORNIAN (10/18/1974)
“’RICHARD III—A THEATRICAL GAMBLE PAYS OFF’….Out of the middle of the platform, like a rat from a sewer, climbs Richard….a study in black, from his long, lank hair to his high boots, to say nothing of the look of malevolent discontent on his face…. Kim’s Richard has trenchantly the qualities Shakespeare gave him, the sources of his lasting fascination through the centuries—glittering intellect, a black heart, a sardonic enjoyment of his ruthless cleverness, a wholly frank admission of his dastardly intentions. Until we can begin to feel true pity for his victims…we rather enjoy seeing him work. Like the Devil in ‘Paradise Lost,’ he is the most interesting fellow around….”
–William C. Glackin, SACRAMENTO BEE (10/18/1974)
“Maybe everybody loves a lover, but villains are usually more interesting…. Richard is beautifully evil as he schemes, flatters, and plays on his hunchback and short leg to gain sympathy. He courts women in order to use them and fawns on his brothers while plotting their deaths. Randall Duk Kim portrays a Richard who uses his ugliness to rationalize his thirst for power and the throne of England…. Duk Kim grimaces, gropes and grovels as a Richard who is evilly intelligent, able to use people’s weaknesses to make them do his will….”
–Sandy Burnett, TRACY PRESS (10/18/1974)
“’EVIL LOSES, BUT IT WAS FUN FOR A WHILE’…. Richard dominates the play…. Kim’s Richard is forceful, petulant, hypnotic and acrobatic. In fact, he almost becomes the only character on the stage with a measure of intelligence and wit…. And Kim’s performance is good enough to make you wish that evil would triumph, which is no small feat.”
–Gary Tischler, TRI-VALLEY HERALD (10/18/1974)
“’ACT DRUMS IN NEW SEASON….WHILE I COULD NOT’ really believe in the malevolence of Kim—he was too eminently reasonable for that—he did full justice to the poetry….”
–Richard Simon, SACRAMENTO UNION (10/19/1974)
“’A WEIRD HYBRID’…. Duk Kim as Richard is superb; frightening, feigning charm and sincerity but brutal and unforgiving. He is a man who must forever grasp after power and position, and then attaining it, looks ill at ease and out of place perched high on a ladder-like throne, clutching his power at the end of a chain. …The scene where Buckingham, too, is rejected by the new king unleashes all the fury of this play. The audience is transfixed and aghast as puny Richard scrabbles down from his perch to lash at his only remaining friend….”
–Abby Jane Frederickson, HILLBOROUGH BOUTIQUE (10/22/1974)
“’SINGLE PERFORMANCE SUSTAINS ‘RICHARD III’’….But back to Mr. Duk Kim, whose creation of the twisted little monster that Shakespeare made of Richard is one of the best things I’ve seen at the ACT in a very long time. New to the company this year, the diminutive actor possesses a powerful voice and a commanding stage presence. Ingeniously bent and deformed by a costume that is all leather trusses and corrective shoes, he limps about the stage with a kind of hideous grace, a paradigm of evil energy….”
–Sharron Sussman, MILL VALLEY RECORD (10/23/1974)
“…Randall Duk Kim, a Korean-American actor, who has scored major triumphs on the New York stage, joined the ACT company this season to play Richard and his contorted, savage portrayal is superb. He clearly intones the prologue which reveals Richard to be a scheming, diabolical, neurotic character, whose nature has fascinated psychologists since the science was founded. To the final scene when he offers his kingdom for a horse, he dominates the action by sheer force of his characterization….”
–Jimmie Jones VALLEJO-TIMES HERALD (10/24/1974)
“’ACT OPENER A BIT BIZARRE’….Randall Duk Kim in the role of Richard did indeed prove a villain but he was equally determined to prove a living and breathing human being. His performance was superb. He played a variety of moods and emotions and owned them all; he was particularly adept at playing Richard the dissembler (read: actor)…. Richard’s unwavering realism…has the uncanny effect of making Richard almost sympathetic. This is a villain who has killed his own brother, and two young and innocent nephews on his way to the crown, and yet one is not exultant when the knight in white armor, Richmond, kills him in battle. Why are we not cheering for the virtuous prince…? It is because the victor is made of only cardboard while the vanquished is flesh and blood and we recognize him—as thoroughly despicable as he is—as one of our own kind.”
–David W. Moyer, STANFORD DAILY (10/25/1974)
“’ACT MISUNDERSTOOD’….One last word: I agree that one hardly ‘cheers’ for right (white) in the end. It is possible, however, that this was Ball’s intent. The mood and rhythm of the play are dark, evoking the darker impulses from the individuals in the audience. Isn’t it a final tribute to the superb talent of director Ball and actor Duk Kim that even through the “morass of melodrama’ one continues to sympathize, darkly, with the enigmatic Richard?”
–Christina Fernandez, Undergraduate, Letter to the Editor, STANFORD DAILY (11/5/1974)
“’ACT’S SENSATIONAL OPENING!’….’Richard III’ was a ruthless tyrant with a grotesque physical appearance. As Richard, Randall Duk Kim, turns in a magnificent performance. The role makes great demands on the actor, not only from a physical standpoint but also being a totally unsympathetic character. Mr. Kim’s performance is the classic example of superb control of his characterization, plus his outstanding mastery of the Shakespearean artistry that should not be missed….”
–Wally Rutherford, BAY AREA REPORTER (10/30/1974)
“’’RICHARD III’ IS MEMORABLE AND EXCITING THEATRE EXPERIENCE’….Randall Duk Kim portrays the misshapen Richard, characterized as one of the most consummate villains in history. And indeed he is—conniving, deceitful, lustful, power-hungry and otherwise thoroughly despicable. Kim’s performance in this taxing role is magnificent….”
–Judy Richter, FAIRFIELD DAILY REPUBLIC (11/10/1974)
“…Fortunately, the one ingredient that knits the whole play together and makes it work is the character of Richard, played with masterful aplomb by Randall Duk Kim…. Kim possesses the quicksilver versatility to pull off the chameleon histrionics crucial to the demanding role of Richard—a character who could, himself, assume every mood and passion at will. We see the violent and sanguinary murderer, the witty, arrogant and cunning despot, the sycophantic, hypocritical usurper, and silver-tongued womanizer in Richard. Kim rises to these levels, short of brilliance. If he does not entirely succeed in concentrating on the appropriate delivery of every word and phrase, as delineated by Shakespeare, he gives the part an animated vigor and humanity that bestows Richard with believability….”
–Genny Lim, EAST/WEST (11/13/1974)
“…the outstanding performance of this (or any) A.C.T. season is that by young Randall Duk Kim, whose Richard out-evils even Olivier’s ‘hunch-backed toad.’… He is a brilliant actor who delights in playing non-Oriental roles, even one-man shows of his own devising, such as ‘Mark Twain’ and ‘Edgar Allan Poe.’ His hypnotic characterization in ‘Richard’ is remarkable….”
–Dennis Forbes, AFTER DARK (12/1974)
