A king of the disco: Richard II is reimagined in ruffled capes and giant pearls at the Stratford Festival

“Richard II,” which opened last weekend at the Stratford Festival, begins in the throbbing, glitzy haze of Studio 54. A dancing army of angels in sculptural white wings over sparkling black jumpsuits and bondage gear undulate around the royal court at the club. King Richard II, a shimmering vision in all white, stands on a raised dais, a magnificent sheer cape swirling around his platform shoes.

The palette is strictly white, grey, silver and black until his crown descends from heaven into the angels’ waiting hands, the only item of gold. Atop Richard’s curls and moustache, the ultimate symbol of power takes on a cartoonish, Basquiat-esque feel.

The Shakespeare play was adapted by Canadian playwright Brad Fraser (“Unidentified Human Remains and the True Nature of Love” and “Poor Superman”) and places a Black, queer Richard II in the context of the New York disco scene of the 1970s and ’80s, with the spectre of AIDS cresting the horizon.

This period setting allows an exploration of the “ebb and flow of conservatism and liberalism,” said director Jillian Keiley. “With the rise of gay liberation after Stonewall and the peace-loving anti-capitalism of the early ’70s, we were ripe for a kind of new Utopia. But in the early ’80s, AIDS came and terrified the public into retreating back into shame and oppression.” That pattern is, of course, at play once again.

A unique historical artifact inspired this interpretation. During his reign, King Richard II commissioned a painting, the Wilton Diptych, that became his personal altarpiece. “Like any king, Richard really believed that he was God’s mouthpiece on earth, It’s noted in the play by Shakespeare and, moreover, proven in this wonderful piece of art,” said Keiley.

The painting features Jesus, Mary and a league of angels on one panel, and Richard at the age of his spiritual awakening (around 14 years old) on the other, being presented by two other notably religious kings and heralded by John the Baptist himself. The angels wear the insignia Richard used for his army, the White Hart: a stag, which we see throughout the new play, including on an enormous belt buckle worn by the king.

The angels in the diptych resonated with the Studio 54 setting: bartenders at the club often wore angel costumes. That “cinched the idea of the angels being so present,” said Keiley, adding that they never represent God, as Richard assumed, but rather “the inspiration, vanity and glory of power itself.” When he relinquishes his crown, the angels forsake him, too.

Costume designer Bretta Gerecke says she began with the usual photo and book research but then came across the best source of all while working on a play in New York last fall: the designer who created outfits for staff of Studio 54 itself. “He became a real, live, beautiful rebirth of oral history of a place where he was also a drag queen back in the day,” she said. One incredible detail she gleaned: club regulars mixed fish scales into their makeup to make their looks more iridescent.

In that era, “fashion was exploding, particularly in New York,” Gerecke said. “It was like a gleeful attack on what people were wearing in the world: Bianca Jagger, Elton John bedecked from head to toe in rhinestones. It felt like a time when you could be whoever you wanted to be and express yourself as if you were a living painting.” Thus the angels are layered in sequins, lace and organza: glittering, sensual and provocative.

The king, of course, stands above this decadent melee, played with great charisma by Stephen Jackman-Torkoff. They are a performer, playwright and poet from Toronto who also appears this Stratford season in “Grand Magic.”

“The character Richard II is, in our adaptation, a very courageous, jovial, genuine disrupter and lover of life,” said Gerecke. “Richard’s costumes are all shades of white and cream, some metallic, some light silver. A lot of it is highly reflective.”

The costumes for the king start out very flamboyant. Take that voluminous organza cape, frilled and adorned with a scalloped detail that moves beautifully. “That was really important for us: to make sure that they could gain the space and take the room as they arrived at the club, almost in a Met Gala moment of arrival,” said Gerecke. “The translucence of it also felt important because there’s a lightness about Stephen as Richard.”

Richard’s loss of power through the play is communicated through wardrobe. “Scene by scene, we remove those grand pieces and replace them with pieces that are less demanding of space, less flamboyant,” Gerecke explained.

In a neat bit of symmetry, the platform shoes of the disco era were also all the rage in the time of Richard’s reign. “We were able to combine the two and gain that hierarchical, powerful stance that you can with a platform,” said Gerecke.

Jewelry denotes status across time and cultures. Here, Richard wears a plethora of pearls, including a fabulous single strand of gumball pearls that bring to mind Barbara Bush. Pearls also help the audience keep track of Richard’s allies, who wear stacks upon stacks of them, like in Karl Lagerfeld’s heyday at Chanel.

Another device used to distinguish factions was to put Richard’s foe, Henry Bolingbroke, who becomes Henry IV, into much more conservative clothing. Gerecke chose a very fine wool fabric for his suiting and that of his followers, but kept it regal with a metallic silver finish. “It isn’t a matter of light and dark, good and evil,” she said. “They are both light within their own right. But Bolingbroke is a far more conservative, opaque character.”

Richard’s wife, Queen Isabel, is a little sidelined in the original play and especially in this production, with a husband who spends more time in the bath houses than her chambers. Gerecke cast her eye a few years past the disco era into the New Romantics to give her the right feel. “She has a very complicated relationship with Richard, but she requires the space of a queen, and to put her in something light or soft didn’t feel right. She needed something more commanding.” The dress she gets is broad-shouldered, multi-layered and ruched, calling to Gerecke’s mind Nick Rhodes of Duran Duran heading out somewhere fabulous in London.

Once Isabel has been sent back to France, and the angels have deserted Richard, he is stripped of all his finery. It is a denouement built from reverse wardrobing. By the end, Richard is left with just his lace underpants, wrapping himself in a robe as he runs through the streets. In his prison cell (of neon light bulbs), the former king truly has no clothes.

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