This isn’t the first time director Damien Ryan and Sport for Jove, the ever-mutating ensemble he’s led for the past couple of decades, have laid on a big spread. The Player Kings – all nine hours of it – has its roots in SFJ’s similarly epic Rose Riot, which had outdoor seasons in the summer of 2018-19.

But The Player Kings, which runs with some elements from that earlier show, notably its basic structure (spanning Shakespeare’s Richard II to Richard III via the so-called ‘Henriad’ of Henry IV, V and VI), is a significant step-up in terms of clarity and ambition – not to mention audience comfort.

Andrew Cutcliffe and Oliver Ryan in The Player Kings. Photo © Brett Boardman

Divided into six chapters (each around 75-80 minutes, with a 15-minute interval between each), the event commences with the seldom-performed Richard II. It’s a terrific opening salvo, one that lays out the stylistic ground rules of the presentation while showing us the events that will precipitate a dynastic blood feud between the houses of Lancaster and York.

Ryan sets the piece in the 1950s with Richard’s court depicted as a decadent,...