Three interconnected performances of Shakespeare\u27s Richard III display the extreme hermeneutical volatility of representation when remediated through a celebrity\u27s personal history. The film NOW: In the Wings on a World Stage (dir. Jeremy Whelehan, 2014) documents the Bridge Project Company\u27s Richard III directed by Sam Mendes and starring Kevin Spacey (2011-12), a production launched at London\u27s Old Vic and transferred to twelve cities across the globe. Just prior to the distribution of NOW, Netflix released its first season of House of Cards (2013) with Spacey as the politician, Francis Underwood, at the center of its seamy landscape. Spacey insists in multiple interviews, The truth is Frank [of House of Cards] wouldn\u27t exist without Richard III. The House of Card\u27s indebtedness goes deeper than the Mendes production since both Michael Dobbs\u27s original book trilogy (1989-1995) and the Andrew Davies-BBC television adaptations of Dobbs\u27s work (1990; 1993; 1995) acknowledge Shakespeare\u27s history play as inspiration. This web of Richard III performances and slant appropriations does not simply chronicle literary indebtedness but also prompts questions about epistemological ethics and hermeneutical instability. As of October 2017, these three performances of Richard — the Mendes staged instantiation, the Spacey-as-Richard of NOW, and Richard as Frank Underwood — are haunted by the revelation of Spacey\u27s career-long sexual predation. All three Richards began their artistic journey trading on the capital of Spacey\u27s notoriety and deploying a curated history as remediative strategy for producing the 400-year-old play. Now the intersection between celebrity biography and performance confronts the responsibilities of knowing and challenges the affective pleasure viewers take in witnessing the unfettered agency and appetitive voracity of the powerful. The destructive intrusion of Spacey\u27s celebrity biography on the memory and meaning of this suite of Richard III performances provokes heightened ethical scrutiny not just of the institutions that protect predatory artists but also of audiences who must acknowledge their own complicity with Richard\u27s seductive immorality and the stars who play his part
