Michael Urie proves he is as adept at Shakespearean tragedy as he is at musical comedy and TV sitcoms in a powerful staging of the Bard’s Richard II from Red Bull Theater at the Astor Place Theater. Craig Baldwin’s modern dress adaptation has its idiosyncratic flaws, but the central thrust of Richard’s downfall due to his arrogance and lack of empathy comes across with intensity and power.

Baldwin has set the tale of Richard’s selfish reign and the rise of his rival cousin Bolingbroke in 1980s Manhattan. Rodrigo Munoz’s period-perfect costumes and Bobbie Zlotnik’s wigs and make-up put us in that era of shoulder pads and big hair. Richard and his court are more interested in disco dancing to the Eurythmics and snorting coke than in governing a fractured realm. Also, Coleman does not shy away from Shakespeare’s gay subtext, bringing Richard’s homosexuality out of the closet. This king is clearly carrying on an affair with his cousin Aumerle (sly and slinky David Mattar Merten) and his Queen (a limp Lux Pascal) doesn’t seem to have a problem with that. There’s even a scene set in a steambath where all genders of the king’s court get extremely chummy.

Baldwin has also switched sexes in some of the casting with the Duke of York and Northumberland rewritten as women (masterful Kathryn Meisle and cunning Emily Swallow). This reversal and other shifts in Shakespeare’s text don’t always work. An imprisoned Richard is seduced by an assassination-bent Aumerle disguised as a stable hand, putting on a tumbleweed Southwestern twang. It’s as if the two are flirting at a leather bar just before Aumerle stabs the king. Because the Duke of York is now a woman, the Duchess’ lines in the last scenes have been reassigned to the Queen, who should be on a boat, returning to her native France after the deposing of her husband.

Baldwin has restaged the action as a flashback, starting with Richard in his prison cell (Arnulfo Maldonado’s revolving cube of a set reflects the prison-like nature of the king’s status both before and after his downfall.) Urie skillfully limns Richard’s profound degradation and then his unalloyed narcissism once we travel back to the beginning of the story. He then painstakingly details the monarch’s hubris and gradual realization of his own mortality as the trappings of his state are removed by the craftier Bolingbroke.

Bolingbroke. who usurps Richard’s throne to become Henry IV, should be of equal import, but Grantham Coleman fails to register as strongly as Urie. That’s not Coleman’s fault. His Bolingbroke is a bold, charismatic leader, but Urie’s Richard is more complex. The 11-member company provides solid support in multiple roles. In addition to those already mentioned, there is strong work from Ron Canada as the noble John of Gaunt and Daniel Stewart Sherman as the blustering Duke of Norfolk.

Despite the confusing and nonsensical changes, the production is an absorbing, compelling and compact one thanks largely to swift pacing from Baldwin and Urie’s multilayered performance.

Lincoln Center Theater presents another fascinating work about power politics with a strong central performance and an integrated ensemble. Instead of English royal court intrigue, Kyoto by Joe Murphy and Joe Robertson follows the intricate maneuvers behind the climate change protocols arrived at in the title Japanese city in 1997 by the international community. The fascinating trick in Murphy and Robertson’s script, originally presented at Stratford-on-Avon and in London, is their protagonist is Don Pearlman, a real-life climate-change-denying Republican lawyer bent on stopping any meaningful change in fossil fuel consumption at all costs. This at the behest of the Seven Sisters, a septet of oil interests. He leads us on a roller-coaster ride through the climate conference circuit from 1989 when the science was hotly debated to the ultimate confab ratifying the accords to at least try to lower the planet’s temperature.

Part espionage thriller, part political dogfight, part science lecture, but by no means boring, Kyoto is an exciting, enrapturing theatrical spectacle. Stephen Daldry and Justin Martin’s direction moves the play along like a locomotive (I couldn’t think of a carbon-neutral simile—a racehorse, perhaps). Audience members are directly involved with some seated with the actors as conference members at set designer Miriam Buether’s huge circular meeting table which also serves as a stage. We are also given ID badges with different countries and info on their carbon footprint. Neon signs and Akhila Krishna’s impressive video designs flash vital climate stats, acronyms for national alliances, power points, and visual information.

A dynamic Stephen Kunken manages to make the unsavory Pearlman humorous, charismatic and compelling. He guides us through the intricate maze of international negotiations and passionately presents Pearlman’s pro-energy position, almost convincing us he’s in the right. Perlman is not exactly a villain, he thinks what he’s doing is best for his country. Kunken vibrantly represents that stance, flagrantly smoking a cigarette, even as he is put in a wheelchair from cancer. Natalie Gold feelingly conveys the conflicts of Don’s wife Shirley, who is torn between loyalty to her husband and the growing realization that he’s working for the wrong side. Jorge Bosch finds subtle wit and humanity in the Kyoto chairman Raul Estarada-Oyuela who attempts to persuade Pearlman to support the agreement. Kate Burton (USA), Feodor Chin (China), Erin Darke (Germany), Dariush Kashani (Saudi Arabia), Rob Narita (Japan), Ferdy Roberts (UK), Roslyn Ruff (Tanzania), and Taiana Tully (Kiribati) give depth to the national delegates as do Peter Bradbury, Daniel Jenkins, and Imani Jade Powers in multiple roles.

As yet another climate conference is currently taking place in Brazil which the Trump administration has declined to attend, Kyoto is especially relevant theater.

Richard II: Nov. 10—Dec. 14. Red Bull Theater at Astor Place Theater, 434 Lafayette St., NYC. Running time: two hours and 30 mins. including intermission. ticketmaster.com.

Kyoto: Nov. 3—30. Lincoln Center Theater presents the Royal Shakespeare Company and Good Chance production at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater, 150 W. 65th St., NYC. Running time: two hours and 40 mins. including intermission. lct.org.