Thomas Ostermeier has never been one to embrace the rulebook. His psycho-slapstick Hamlet for Berlin’s Schaubühne Theater, seen at the Sydney Festival seven years ago, cast Lars Eidinger as an overweight, bumbling child rolling around in the mud and rain. Gertrude and Ophelia were played by the same actor, and the script was regularly shredded with frequent ad libs in English as well as auf Deutsch. His take on Shakespeare’s Richard III, with Eidinger again as a spitting, pissing arch-cripple, roils into Adelaide as one of several (I lose count) headline acts, and while not as radical or revolutionary as Ostermeier’s take on the Dane, it still offers plenty of semi-masticated food for thought.

^{Lars Eidinger and cast in Richard III. Photos © Tony Lewis}

I use the term arch-cripple advisedly. That is how Ostermeier’s Richard has been labelled from birth, to the extent that he now identifies as such. Hobbling around a court of vacuous, self-serving hedonists, he’s overlooked, underestimated and, when not actively despised, he’s pitied. Excusing himself from the daily round of party poppers and booze, he mops and mows, while boiling on the inside with hatred and...