“Seeing this season’s Richard III is a way of visiting the new Tom Patterson Theatre and of honouring the play that opened the Stratford Festival in 1953. The current production itself, however, leaves an entire theatrical side of Richard’s character unrealized and minimizes the power of his opponent and his triumph over Richard. Like Richard’s ridiculously long coronation robe, a crass attempt to outdo Alec Guinness’s robe in 1953, the production tends too often to be spectacle without sense.”