Queen Elizabeth (Meg Andrews) and Richard III (Chris Raven) in Auckland Shakespeare in the Park's 2025 production of Richard III. Photo: The Pumphouse Theatre
From next week, Aucklanders can see fresh versions of the Bard's legendary plays Richard III and The Taming of the Shrew at Shakespeare in the Park.
While the city's annual summer Shakespeare run attracted "a really loyal bunch of people", Richard III director Catherine Boniface tells Summer Weekends she was hoping to attract some new and perhaps younger faces this year.
Fans of Peaky Blinders and Guy Ritchie films may enjoy her gritty modernised version of the play, set in the seedy underworld of 1940s London.
After acting in several Shakespeare in the Park productions, Boniface directed Macbeth in 2020.
Theatre director Catherine Boniface Photo: Supplied
Invited back to direct another Shakespeare play this summer, she chose Richard III, partly because it hadn't been performed at Auckland Shakespeare in the Park for 13 years.
Although Boniface had seen Shakespeare's version of the murderous 15th-century king's story performed before, she admitted really struggling to read the whole lengthy play which was "very heavy with characters and history and stories and relationships and family".
Once Richard III was underway, audience members should be ready for the actors to possibly "break the fourth wall" and address them directly, Boniface said.
"Often you're not miked so you have to keep things relatively small and intimate and I think that broadens the experience."
Onstage, these actors would also be tasked with getting their lines heard over an outdoor soundscape that could include fighting geese, teenagers doing late-night manus off the jetty into nearby Lake Pupuke, music from picnickers in the nearby park, helicopters and police sirens, Boniface said.
"It really comes alive in a way that perhaps an indoor show doesn't provide."
Made of exposed brick and rustic wood, the 180-capacity PumpHouse amphitheatre was "a very, very charming setting" that attracted people who wouldn't otherwise be theatregoers, Boniface said.
"They quite like sitting up with the glasses of wine and their picnic blankets."
Boniface said you wouldn't even have to worry about the weather forecast.
Richard III (Chris Raven) hustles his way through the treacherous streets of post-war London at Auckland Shakespeare in the Park 2025. Photo: The PumpHouse Theatre
"Bring a cushion, bring a little jacket. If it rains we simply up sticks and move it indoors. We're all set to go indoors so it doesn't ever get cancelled."
Richard III runs from 21 January to 15 February at 7:30pm with an indoor matinee performance - "for those who'd like to have a back on their seat" - at 2pm on 2 February.
'Pay what you like night' is happening on 28 January.
The Taming of the Shrew was set to run from 18 January to 14 February but due to cast illness will now open on 22 January.
Both shows run for two hours and 30 minutes.
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