Welcoming back Robert Sean Leonard as the king
Part of San Diego's Old Globe Festival Season, Shakespeare's historical thriller makes a welcome return this summer, with Robert Sean Leonard reprising the role of the reckless and ambitious English king. The first play in the four-part Wars Of The Roses cycle about the tumultuous fortunes of the Houses of York and Lancaster, Richard II is portrayed as a capricious and vain monarch, who is convinced of his own divinity, but fails to see the danger and precarious nature of his claim to the throne.
Exiling all those who he sees as a threat, the banishment of Henry Bolingbroke would prove to be his undoing. Accusing the Duke of Norfolk of seizing his lands and plotting to murder his uncle the Duke of Gloucester, Henry leaves for exile abroad, promising to return for his rightful inheritance, with an army to support him. When Richard is distracted by a rebellion in Ireland, Bolingbroke returns quietly to England, intent on recovering his rightful property, and instigates an uprising against the incompetant king, much to the glee of his peers.