Commoners Over Kings

In Richard III, the ninth of Shakespeare’s ten history plays, King Richard seduces a widow, orders ten of his countrymen killed, and attempts to marry his niece. Each of his victims seems aware of his ruthless ambition—Anne, his wife-to-be, calls him a “defused infection of a man” in their first meeting. But there’s an element of enchantment there—she marries him, after all. What we witness is enchanting, too. Privy to Richard’s inner life, we cheer on his ambition, knowing that a merciless climb will give way to a spectacular fall. 

Murph, the actor-protagonist of Kanika Vaish’s 2nd Murderer on until November 1st at The Flea Theater, is similarly taken with the king. He is our jovial, sweaty, slightly self-conscious narrator, played by Txai Frota with youthful, kinetic energy. We meet him in the audition room for Richard III, where the senior members of The Weathered Bear Ensemble are forming their cast. Well, parts of it anyway – all the major roles are already taken, with Dick, the show’s wealthy executive producer, playing Richard. Murph must settle for the walk-on parts of Second Murderer/ Guard 2 / Catesby / Other Ensemble. But hey, a role is a role! 

His company includes Norbert (Milton Espinoza Jr.), the eager dramaturg with a 50-slide presentation no one pays attention to; Paulette (Flower Estefana Rios), the conscientious SM and Murph’s college ex; Cynthia (Jennifer Fouché), the sage director who co-founded the ensemble with Klaude (Basil Rodericks); Justine (Lizzie Markson), the confident recipient of two cast crushes; Max (Ahmad Maher), Murph’s nervous friend and onstage partner-in-crime; and Ann (Remidy Dixon, filling in for TuQuyen Pham), the twenty-something ingénue entangled with the self-absorbed Dick (Shawn K. Jain), who is ten years her senior. 

Vaish writes compelling ensemble scenes. When the cast meets for post-tech drinks, we form a clear sense of their dynamics. Ducking in and out of conversations, our focus shifts from the bathroom, to the bar, to the smoker’s patio, where different pairings of cast members gather to gossip. Witnessing becomes key here, in some way a key for the whole play. Murph watches Ann reject Dick’s advances. Norbert sees Paulette and Murph’s uneasy avoidance of their past relationship. Klaude notices Ann’s discomfort during rehearsal and guesses the cause. At the end of the night, Dick watches Ann and Justine kiss, igniting a Richard III-style jealousy and resentment within him. 

As Justine, Markson projects an easy sense of cool-girl authority, and director Frankie DiCiaccio plays to her strengths by placing her physically at the center of a key scene. As Cynthia and Klaude, Fouché and Rodericks give especially grounded performances—playing longtime artistic collaborators, they bond over their old age and watch the younger cast members like proud parents, concerned about this one’s naïveté and that one’s tendency to goof off. 

Rodericks leans into a lovably bohemian energy, with a scarf tied at the neck and the most exotic possible pronunciation of his words (tequila becomes ‘te-kwee-lah,’ people becomes ‘peep-hole’). Fouché conveys so much power through her eyes alone as she stares down a vaping Norbert in disapproval. 

All of this observing reaches a breaking point on opening night, when Dick comes to Max and Murph with a dangerous proposition that marks a significant tonal shift. Motivated by his jealousy, he asks them to change a key element of their performance, to potentially fatal effect. When they refuse, Dick pulls out the blackmail—he’s been watching them closer than they thought. 

The forced change in performance, foisted on Max and Murph, opens up a wormhole at the end of Act I. At the top of Act II, we’re taken, via this tear in space-time, from the real world of the Weathered Bear’s production and dropped into the fictional, historical world of Richard III. Gone are New York, the ensemble, the stage on which Max and Murph stood, and the audience watching them perform. The two men are no longer playing First and Second Murderer for an audience. They are suddenly in the Tower of London, wielding daggers. 

In this new world, which Max and Murph inhabit somewhat like players in a video game, Murph realizes he can actually impact the course of events. Rather than being relegated to a bit part, he can approach the court and warn them of the murders to come. Murph refers to Norbert’s dramaturgy presentation (projection design by Etzu Shaw) to guide him through the plot of Richard III, and the other characters come to see him as an oracle. 

The sci-fi twist comes with sci-fi questions – what does it mean to be literally inside the script of Richard III? Are there consequences to changing its narrative? If we die in the game, do we die in real life?

Here, the beautifully built, and well-established, ensemble dynamics from Act I muddy.

While the doubling is somewhat intentional – Klaude and Cynthia as Elizabeth and Edward, our elders, Ann and Dick as Anne and Richard III, our troubled lovers – the intrigue of these pairings falls away. Rather than continuing the questions from Act I (will Dick’s pride recover from Anne’s rebuffs? Will Paulette and Murph forgive one another for their relationship’s rocky end?) The major question that drives the action of Act II is: how do we stop Richard? 

In moving between these two worlds, we move from a drama of interpersonal scale to one of time-bending wormholes, kings and kingdoms. It’s a tricky shift, and one that left me missing Vaish’s deftly drawn contemporary dynamics from Act I.

Costuming helps here, with designer NIIAMAR using colorful shorts, structured vests, and sparkling brooches to craft ingenious takes on courtly dress. Well-tailored hand-painted dresses and a neck ruff help the queens achieve a sense of royal poise.

Strong performance moments remain, too, with Dixon delivering a seduction / revenge scene that manages to be nuanced and mournful, and Fouché and Rodericks mirroring their tender camaraderie from Act I, this time as King Edward and Queen Elizabeth. But I found my endurance fading as I lost the thread of motivation. Why is Murph so interested in manipulating the world of Richard III? Though he’s giddy about his ability to stop Richard, we know him as an actor who dreams of a leading role, but we’ve come so far from the exoskeleton of a performance. What good is controlling the narrative if there’s no one there to watch him?

By the end, we return to the present. I was grateful to be back with the characters from the Weathered Bear Ensemble, with their sharply-drawn differences and tangled social web. As a play that draws inspiration from Shakespeare’s minor roles, 2nd Murderer is most successful when it concerns the lives of commoners over kings.