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There have been twelve productions of Richard III by the Royal Shakespeare Company since it was formed to replace the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in 1961. Six productions have been chosen here, omitting those in 1961, 1975, 1980, 1988, 1998 and 2000.

The first Richard to show off his acting skills to great popularity and acclaim in Shakespeare's play was Burbage, and actors have been making the most of its opportunities ever since. Laurence Olivier's performance at the New Theatre, London, in the 1940's, cast a long shadow from which later actors strove to escape. His portrayal of a gloating, insidiously humorous, long-nosed wolf among sheep kept the focus tightly on Richard, even following Colley Cibber's seventeenth-century adaptation in cutting Margaret from his film version. Some critics judged Christopher Plummer's performance, in 1961, to be pedestrian because it resisted the temptations of melodrama and omitted the interpolations from Henry VI so familiar from the Cibber and Olivier versions.

In 1963 and 1988 the play was presented as part of the cycle of The Wars of the Roses. In each case, the three parts of Henry VI were adapted into two plays and Richard III completed the trilogy. In 1988, the court gathered around the new king, in the final moments of the so-called Rise of Edward IV to celebrate his inauguration of peace. Richard of Gloucester turned away from his place in the midst of his family into the spotlight and cried “Now!” Richard III was about to begin. The great golden sun of York which had hung above King Edward changed to black when King Richard set out for battle, slicing across the stage like a huge circular saw with jagged teeth.

Directors have often taken advantage of Queen Margaret's role as the remembrancer of past wrongs to emphasise the play's inexorable cycle of retribution. In The Other Place in 1975, as in 1992, she was onstage, repeating her curses, for each death. The 1975 production depended upon her as kind of stage-manager, especially toward the end when, after Buckingham's death, she helped the actor out of that character's costume and into that of Richmond.

Richard's deformity offers fascinating scope to actor and designer. In 1980, Alan Howard's black leather-clad king had a permanently gloved hand with a built-in dagger. He wore a heavy boot with a chain attached, by which, with immense effort, he heaved his crippled foot up the steps to his hard-won throne.