Best Shakespeare productions: what's your favourite Richard III?

There are two ways of looking at this play. Seen in isolation, it offers scope for a standalone virtuosic display. Play it in the context of the preceding histories and Richard embodies the fulfilment of the curse on the house of Lancaster. I've seen some dazzling, individual Richards: the superbly menacing Georgian actor Ramaz Chkhikvadze in a Rustaveli production (Edinburgh, 1979), Ian McKellen as a 1930s fascist dictator (1990 on stage, 1996 on film), Kenneth Branagh as a plausibly smiling villain at the Sheffield Crucible (2002) and Kevin Spacey as a self-loathing monster (2011). But equally I've seen some fine Richards who seemed part of the grand mechanism of history: Ian Holm in The Wars of the Roses (1963), Andrew Jarvis in the English Shakespeare Company cycle (1986) and Jonathan Slinger in Michael Boyd's RSC Histories (2007).

But two performances tower above all others. Olivier in his 1955 film, which I sat through twice in one day, established the idea of Richard as Satanic joker and demonic ironist: all later performances became a reaction to the Olivier prototype. No one went further than Antony Sher (RSC, 1984) who, propelling himself forward on two giant crutches, reinvented Richard as a figure of active, ferociously energetic evil. Both performances haunt me still.

• What's your favourite version of Richard III? Let us know in the comments thread below.