The fifteenth season of the festival at Burlington, Vermont, consisted of Richard III, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and Romeo and Juliet, the first two directed by Festival Producer Edward J. Feidner, and the last by guest director Ada Brown Mather. The world of this Richard Ill was a grotesque nightmarish one of curses, treachery, ill omens, shrieks, murders, and funeral drums. A sickly, superstitious, guilt-ridden king is ruled by stupid men like Ely and the Lord Mayor; flatterers and newly minted noblemen like the pastel cowards surrounding the Queen; smug lords who smile as their enemies go under yet never see the ax coming; men of high and low degree (familiar enough in our day) who shrug off responsibility by merely following orders and hide their guilt from themselves; impotent, wailing women turned venomous in their grief; helpless innocents; terrified functionaries; henchmen eager to slaughter; and shrewd, powerhungry manipulators. An added silent opening scene set the tone for this gothic melodrama. Here was no hint of the summer, merry meetings, and delightful measures described by Riehard. The play opened with the funeral of Henry VI. After a slow procession to muffled drums and Gregorian chant, wheezing King Edward tossed a single flower on the casket.-Anne wept by the corpse while three hatchet-faced men smirked nearby and two sudden political arrests were made. In this Macbeth-like world supped full of horrors, the piercing shriek of Margaret as she ran from the scene did not have any effect at all upon those on stage. Randy Kim's somber Richard was in keeping with this Jacobean but not without cost, for this was a far less entertaining Richard than the one we are accustomed to, neither comic villain nor artist in evil. Especially in the first half of the play, he lacked the verve and ironic wit of Shakespeare's character. He found little relish in playing upon the evil natures of men; little joy in assuming the roles of offended plain man, wooer, repentant sinner; and little delight in standing christian humanist values on their heads and creating in himself a parody of the ideal king. This was a puzzling, sullen, bitter Richard-curiously static and underplayed, full of self-pity and yet never sentimentally justified, disgusted at the weakness and gullibility of those around him. The meeting of Richard and Anne in I. ii was anything but a keen encounter of wits. He hovered above her like a bird of prey and moved in for the kill. He was not really a wooer and she was not really won. It was a display of naked power. He was like a snake hypnotizing a rabbit. She seemed stunned as he drew her further and further from the corpse, handed her his sword and then turned her humanity against her, circled her with his arms, placed a ring on her finger, and kissed her. Where one expected big laughs at I am too childish-foolish for this world, I thank God for my humility,