Lawson Taitte

In the case of Kitchen Dog Theater's Richard III, less is a whole lot more.

Adapter-director Ian Leson has dispensed with much of the very long text. He has shrunk the usual cast of thousands to a mere eight actors. Most play multiple characters, which carries the potential of confusion. Nevertheless, this is the clearest and most potent version of Shakespeare's tragedy Dallas has seen to date.Kitchen Dog's production, which opened Friday, revolves around René Moreno in the title role. As the other performers dance to some hip-hop in the opening scene, he rolls on in a wheelchair. He addresses Richard's famous opening soliloquy to the partyers. They ignore him and leave the stage, just in time for Mr. Moreno to declare to the audience, "I am determined to be a villain."

Most actors make Richard either a knowing Punch-and-Judy comic figure or a demonic force. Mr. Moreno just plays the text. There's never an ironic smile or a moment of complicity with the audience. Instead, Mr. Moreno gives us the music of Shakespeare's verse as if he were playing it lovingly on a viola. He's all wide-eyed sincerity; indeed, almost bug-eyed. But he never lets on that he, or Richard, is insincere except by way of an offhand remark after the other characters depart.

Don't imagine that Mr. Moreno's take on his role deprives the play of its hideously gleeful irony. Mr. Leson lets the script make its own jokes. One of the best comes in the scene right before intermission, when Richard's allies and the mayor of London beg Richard to accept the illicit crown he pretends not to want. Cameron Cobb as Buckingham makes the people's case like a modern political operative, slicing his hands in exquisitely premeditated gestures. Barry Nash as Catesby is even more obviously programmed in advance, amusingly speaking each line as if it had been memorized – insecurely.

The modern setting doesn't necessarily tone down the language's grandeur, though. Christina Vela plays a succession of queens and ladies (as well as the mayor). Her quick changes of costume pose the greatest danger to following the story, but she distinguishes each role sharply so as to minimize the threat.

As Queen Margaret, whose husband has been killed before the play begins, she's a half-mad specter roaming the castle and pronouncing curses. In a climactic scene late in the play, she encounters Tina Parker's Queen Elizabeth – whose own husband, brothers and sons have just fallen victim to her curse.

Ms. Vela gloats gorgeously, getting crazier by the minute, while Ms. Parker's anguish rises closer and closer to the surface. This is what acting is all about. Soon after, Ms. Parker is trading lines of verse with Mr. Moreno as he, the scourge of her family, persuades her to let him marry her daughter. The performers give us living proof that you can do full justice to poetic language while still creating detailed, complex characters.

Despite the cellphones and revolvers, Kitchen Dog has basically given us some quite classic, and classy, Shakespeare. Toward the end, though, Mr. Leson's take on Richard III goes against the grain of the text. David Goodwin's Richmond, the good guy who's going to get rid of Richard, sounds as hollow in his rhetoric as Richard does when the two are addressing their troops before the final battle. "A pox on both your houses," comes from a different Shakespeare play, but it could serve as a motto for the political disenchantment embodied in this production.Plan your life

Performances continue through May 3 at the McKinney Avenue Contemporary. Runs 140 mins. $15 to $20. 214-953-1055, www.kitchendogtheater.org.

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