A GENDER-FLUID RICHARD III ROOTED IN
HISTORY AND PERFORMANCE TRADITION

A commanding central performance anchors
a sharp, theatrically confident staging

The Tragedy of Richard the Third, William Shakespeare’s second-longest play after Hamlet, and the fourteenth most produced play in his canon (the first being Midsummers Night’s Dream), has an exceedingly straightforward plot.

Richard wants to be king and will kill anybody in his way to achieve it, offering ample opportunity for scenery chewing—enough to qualify as the Bard’s equivalent of Nathan’s Famous International Hot Dog Eating Contest.

We know from anecdotal reports that Shakespeare wrote the role for his beloved Richard Burbage to play the smooth-talking, bloody-minded Duke of Gloucester, and since then the roll call of thespians lining up to portray theatre’s most melodramatic, malevolent Machiavellian has been impressive.

Ann Noble

Everyone from David Garrick (the eighteenth century’s Brad Pitt) to John Wilkes Booth (the nineteenth century’s Brad Pitt) has taken on the role. The twentieth century may not have seen a Brad Pitt interpretation, but there was Laurence Olivier, George C. Scott (who earned an Obie for his 1957 production), and Anthony Sher, whose 1984 use of crutches inspired his famous “spider Richard.” Ian McKellen closed the century with his chilling “Nazi Richard.”

Alex Neher, Randolph Thompson, and Wesley Guimarães

Australian Eliza Winstanley (1818–1882) is recognized as perhaps the first woman to portray Richard III on stage. In 2003, London’s Globe saw Kathryn Hunter in the first all-female production. Hunter opened the door for other disabled professional actors, such as wheelchair-bound Michael Patrick Thornton, whose paraplegia was overcome with the use of a robotic exoskeleton, allowing him to stand and walk at Steppenwolf Theatre’s Garage.

The Ensemble

Most recently, in 2024, actress/athlete Katy Sullivan, a bilateral transfemoral amputee and Paralympic champion, played Richard at Chicago Shakespeare Theater, reimagining the character’s physicality in striking and inventive ways at Chicago Shakespeare Theater. In a blatant dismissal that her body–“deformed [and] unfinished” as it might be–was “not shaped for sportive tricks,” she set out to shatter preconceived notions of what limitations besieged the disabled community. Beginning her “winter of discontent,” sans any prosthetics, she nevertheless scurried about the stage with amazing agility before springing up into a wheelchair. After obtaining the crown, she transitioned to a rolling throne, then employed a pair of extended wooden legs that made her the tallest, if most ungainly, presence swaying across the stage, and finally donned the prosthetic running blades she wore to victory in the Paralympics to become a Terminator-type killing machine during the climactic clash at Bosworth Field. The show went to New York, where Sullivan was not only the first female amputee to perform on Broadway but the first to be nominated for a Tony Award.

The point of this historical overview is to illustrate that the use of a woman in the title role is nothing new.

It is always about the “Richard” himself or herself.

Ann Noble

And in this, Ann Noble at A Noise Within shines blindingly bright.

Ann Noble and Tony Pasqualini

Other than promotional images of Noble seated on a throne, her high-heeled foot planted in the back of a fallen opponent, there is nothing feminine about her interpretation. With her chest bound, she commands the stage with the brutal confidence—nay, the arrogance—of one of the Kray twins, Britain’s most notorious and gruesomely murderous gangsters.

Noble does not play the role as a gendered variation—no Richelle, Richana, or female Richard. She removes gender from the equation entirely. What remains is a vicious, sharp-tongued, wise-ass, smart aleck punk. In other words, she plays Richard as Ann Noble—and the result is electrifying.

The Ensemble

It is not Noble’s performance alone that makes this production compelling. Director Guillermo Cienfuegos, likely in collaboration with dramaturg and Shakespeare consultant Miranda Johnson-Haddad, provides a swift and illuminating prologue to the Wars of the Roses. Drawing from Shakespeare’s Henry VI trilogy, the production efficiently contextualizes the political turmoil leading into Richard III.

With contributions from Angela Balogh Calin (scenic design), Christine Cover Ferro (costume design), Nick Santiago (projections), Ken Booth (lighting), and Chris Moscatiello (sound), Cienfuegos crafts a staging that is both visually striking and theatrically cohesive.

The Ensemble

Cienfuegos demonstrates a clarity of storytelling often found among top-tier directors, conveying complex ideas with precision—such as suggesting the Battle of Bosworth Field through a cascade of cards shifting from white to red. He has sculpted a tantalizing and exhilarating staging that does not fail on any level.

 Ann Noble and Erika Soto

As expected from A Noise Within, the stage is filled with strong performances. Neill Fleming (Edward IV) and Lynn Robert Berg (Duke of Buckingham) provide compelling counterpoints—victim and co-conspirator, two sides of the same doomed coin. Another standout is Erika Soto, first as Lady Anne, but then as the assassin Tyrrell, a small but pivotal part, for which she radiated the unsettling intensity of the Moors Murderer, Myra Hindley, whose crimes of sadistic murder against children still shocks.

Ann Noble and Neill Fleming

A final note on Noble’s artistry: following a less successful clown performance at the 2025 Hollywood Fringe Festival, this production reveals a performer who has absorbed, refined, and transformed that experience into something potent. Elements of grotesque humor and theatrical menace—reminiscent of figures like Art, Wrinkles, Helmut Doork, and the vile and jesting Pennywise—the John Wayne Gacy clown—surface here in ways that deepen the characterization. This is the hallmark of any actor, or for that matter any human being possessed of aspirations—the recognition that one can always improve, and the craving to always learn more; this is what makes for the true artist, whether on stage or in life.

Ann Noble is unquestionably one of them.

Ann Noble

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photos by Craig Schwartz

Richard III
A Noise Within
3352 E Foothill Blvd in Pasadena
2 hours, 40 minutes, one intermission
Thurs-Sat at 7:30; Sat & Sun at 2
ends on March 8, 2026
for tickets ($48-$75), call 626.356.3100 visit A Noise Within

for more shows, visit Theatre in LA

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