The actor, currently playing Shakespeare’s villainous king, says Brexit has brought the play a pertinence that is not lost on audiences

It is a story of vaulting ambition and ruthless scheming which takes a nation very quickly from stability to chaos. Sound familiar?

Richard III review – Ralph Fiennes gets to grips with Shakespeare's ruthless ruler Read more

The parallels between Shakespeare’s Richard III and British politics this summer are striking and it is not being lost on audiences, the actor Ralph Fiennes said on Tuesday.

Fiennes is playing the villainous king at the Almeida theatre in north London, a production that will be filmed and broadcast to cinemas around the world on Thursday.

“Most Shakespeare plays that deal with power, whether they are the history plays or the Roman plays, you can always broadly speaking find a parallel somewhere in the world to what’s going on,” Fiennes said.



“It’s quite rare that you actually are close to a political crisis, political uncertainty. We went into this not knowing what the referendum result was going to be, so when it was as divisive as it was and we saw all these political figures making a play for leadership, Boris Johnson, Michael Gove ... the audience suddenly, it changed.

“Not through our doing but just because of events happening around us. Suddenly it became full of a pertinence that perhaps it hadn’t had before.”

Many people are seeing parallels between the character of Richard III, his brilliant scheming and then apparent reluctance to take the throne, and Tory politicians. “Michael Gove is closest,” said Fiennes. “Because all those protestations about ‘I could never lead, it’s not in my DNA to lead’ – that’s classic Richard.”

Milibands as princes in the tower

The play is directed by the Almeida’s artistic director, Rupert Goold, who said he originally – in 2012 – planned to do a Richard III that riffed on the character of Johnson. “I thought Boris is this figure who is physically strange and yet sexually predatory and potent, inherently comic, outside the rules, of questionable motives, ultimately ambitious. It was going to be very crude ... Milibands as princes in the tower.”

Those ideas were abandoned, particularly when Fiennes became part of the project. But Goold added: “What’s potent about the play is that people are able to read all those parallels without us banging them over the head.”

While there are parallels, Goold hopes politicians will come to the play and see dangers. “Sometimes we people in theatre think we are ‘responding’ to events,” said Goold. “I weirdly feel now, having MPs come to see the production that, without being pretentious about it, potentially the arts have the ability to offer an example as well as respond. It is our job to offer warnings and inspirations.”

Fiennes, who has been attracting strong reviews in the role, called Richard a complex, tormented figure “with different degrees of self-loathing … He is a man who has been without intimacy all his life and I feel there is lots for any actor to mine to find an interior life.”

Fiennes and Goold were speakingbefore Thursday’s broadcast, the first outing for Almeida Theatre Live. It will be in partnership with Picturehouse Entertainment, which is distributing it.