"Richard the Third," Long Beach Shakespeare Company, Long Beach, CA

The most haunting scene in the Long Beach Shakespeare Company’s fine production of Richard III, directed by Helen Borgers, takes place the night before a decisive battle in which Richard’s many enemies mass to depose him.

Applying a keen sense of spatial management to such confined quarters, Borgers angles the stage so it looks as if the sleeping adversaries Richard (Matthew McCallum) and Henry are in separate rooms.

Each is visited by a dream: the many souls of those that Richard has killed inform him that he will die; these same souls inform Henry that he will prevail and become king.

It’s not just a well-executed, well-lit, and well-played scene, it’s a spectral reminder of how much carnage the ambitious, conscienceless, and ruthless Richard, played with spectacular brashness by McCallum, has committed.

Richard is one of the most complex characters in the dramatic canon. He’s decisive and knows exactly what he wants, unlike a certain Dane; he can be delightfully smarmy when he’s courting the ladies; and he's monomaniacal so he eschews moral, political, and legal consequences.

He may have overcome his physical handicap (ugly, hunchback, deformed); but it was his emotional handicap (hubris, ambitious beyond measure) that did him in.

It doesn’t matter that the prey is royal or loyal; ruthless, reckless Richard cuts a swath through nobility, through gender, and through age. His regal ego bathes the plot in blood: with murderous aplomb, he murders his own brother, Clarence; he slaughters his father-in-law, his-brother-in-law, and later his wife; he has no qualms in snuffing Elizabeth’s brother and son; he dispatches Hastings; the alleged bastard, the young Edward, and the faithful Buckingham.

Given Richard’s many sides, his many moods, and his many energy levels, the challenge was to find an actor who can both look kingly and a candidate for Bedlam. McCallum did a magnificent job. He downplayed the king’s physical infirmities and chose to play Richard like a deluded Nixon, unaware until the last second of the storm clouds that gathered above him.

He’s got the presence to pull off Richard’s flights of lunacy as well as the charisma to have conceivably been a good leader if he wasn’t so darn homicidal, ruthless, and paranoid; and he’s got the sense of humor to undercut the rage (the moment he sheepishly accepts the offer to become King because he convinced those around him that Edward was illegitimate was hilarious).

It’s an ambitious undertaking to present a play with so much action, so many characters, and so much plot on such a small stage; but Borgers pulls it off.

A lot of the characters doubled up, there were no set changes, and the close quarters in which Henry skewers Richard served up the action to great dramatic effect: we witnessed history, we witnessed regicide, and we witnessed a production with more than passing relevance to current world politics.

Performances are Thu. – Sat., 8 p.m., Sun., 2 p.m. The show runs until June 16. Tickets are $10-15. The Theatre is located at 4250 Atlantic Ave. For more information call 997-1494 or visit www.lbshakespeare.com.