Bad Behavior

Richard III

by William Shakespeare, directed by Thomas Ostermeier (in German, with supertitles). Brooklyn Academy of Music, October 2017.

WE ENGLISH-SPEAKERS are notoriously possessive about our Bard, and though some Germans, even to this day, will insist that you have not really read Shakespeare until you have read him in Schlegel’s translation, we always beg to differ. So it was with some hesitation that I initially considered, in the spring of 2014, going to a performance of Richard III at the Schaubühne theater in Berlin.

My hesitation didn’t affect things one way or the other, because the run had long since sold out. The production was directed by the well-regarded if quirky Thomas Ostermeier; perhaps more importantly, it featured Lars Eidinger in the starring role. Eidinger was repeatedly described to me as a “famous stage actor”—a phrase so alien to the theatrical situation in our own country as to make it seem translated directly from the German—and his virtues as a performer were universally praised. So when an American-born Berlin friend offered me her extra ticket to the event, promising