Until the 19^th century, theater didn't have what we now call directors. Performers led themselves and each other, or a playwright or company manager shouted suggestions. For millennia, actors got by without a single, commanding presence. I consider that often when I direct a show. It means I have to justify my presence in the room. How? What makes directors indispensable?

First, their job is to keep the show moving. The only acting crime worse than being bad is being boring, and that applies to directing as well. On that score, Scot Whitney's oversight of Richard III at Harlequin succeeds. There's no denying it entertains. There's plenty of mayhem. Its Edwardian costumes are gorgeous, though it does bog down in meditative scenes.

Second, they add clarity. Even the English can't make heads or tails of the intrigues in Richard III, and it's their national history. The program synopsis runs to thousands of words, but even that doesn't help. It behooves a director to make character relationships as clear as humanly possible. I realize Harlequin can only afford a finite number of cast members, but triple- and quadruple-casting actors just muddies the waters. By the end of the play, I'd lost track of who was who, and didn't much care anymore.

Then there's the third major function, which critics and fellow directors notice immediately. (To be fair, most audience members shrug it off.) That job is to establish cohesion, or unity. Each element of the show has to nestle into the same world. Ideally, the unifying "concept" chosen by the director makes sense. Richard III was an actual historical figure in the 16^th century, so I'm not sure why Whitney moved him to the very early 20^th, but whatever. I concede the existence of chainsaws and cattle guns in 1905. They still feel out of place here.

What kind of show are we in? Is that too esoteric a question? Some scripts, even Shakespeare's, bounce from comedy to tragedy to horror, all in the span of a scene. That's okay, but a director has to pick a focus. That's what directors do: they choose. That's their primary job. The program cover calls this Richard "a comedy of tragical proportions." There's the rub. Is it truly a comedy? Is it funny to, say, murder young boys by laying weights across their necks? Absurd, yes - but funny? I say no. There's an easy way to tell: listen to the audience. Are they laughing, or just dutifully chuckling? On opening night, LOLs were few and far between.

Those creepy doctors - are we in a haunted house? Why does Richmond have an American accent? Is Richard ambitious, homicidal, or a Groucho-style vaudevillian? It might seem unfair or even hostile to focus so heavily on concept, but the problems with Harlequin's Richard III are entirely conceptual. It's an entertaining mess.

[Harlequin Productions, Richard III, $20-$31, Thurs.-Sat. 8 p.m., Sun. 2 p.m. through Oct. 27, 202 4^th Ave. E., Olympia, 360.786.0151]