Playwright Migdalia Cruz breathes new life into-Richard III. -Nuyorican playwright Migdalia Cruz unpacks and repositions Shakespeare-s-Richard III-for a twenty-first-century audience. She presents a contemporary English verse translation, faithfully keeping the poetry, the puns, and the politics of the play intact, with a rigorous and in-depth examination of-Richard III-the man, the king, the outsider-who is still the only English king to have died in battle. In the Wars of the Roses, his Catholic belief in his country led to his slaughter at Bosworth-s Field by his Protestant rivals. In reimagining this text, Cruz emphasizes Richard III-s outsider status-exacerbated-by his severe scoliosis, which twisted his spine-by punctuating the text with punk music from 1970s London. Cruz-s Richard is no one-s fool or lackey. He is a new kind of monarch, whose dark sense of humor and deep sense of purpose leads his charge against the society which never fully accepted him because he looked differ
