Reunited with his American Beauty director, Sam Mendes, Kevin Spacey pulls out all the stops with his devilishly entertaining turn in the title role of the Bridge Project’s production of Richard III. Stepping into the footsteps of such illustrious predecessors as Laurence Olivier, Al Pacino and Ian McKellen, the actor delivers a performance that is as much comic as it is menacing, but is always mesmerizing.

The final offering of this ambitious transatlantic theatrical collaboration among the Brooklyn Academy of Music, The Old Vic and Neal Street, the production is not exactly subtle in its approach. Mendes seems to be working for maximum shock value most of the time, and the actors have clearly been encouraged to not hold back. The result is a less than nuanced Richard, but certainly one that well conveys the sensationalistic aspects of Shakespeare’s history play.

Spacey, fitted with a leg brace and a hunchback, establishes the dark comic turn right from the start, when he punctuates his delivery of the famous “Now is the winter of our discontent” speech by tooting on a party noisemaker. His Richard is clearly one who relishes his villainy, and delights in sharing his glee with the audience. He makes us fully aware of the cleverness of his elaborate machinations, and while some of the embellishments are a bit much—I could have done without the Groucho Marx impersonation—he’s wildly entertaining from start to--some three-and-a-half hours later--finish

Mendes’ modern-dress production is powerfully effective, although its devices are by now all too familiar. Video projections are used extensively, most effectively in which we see a close-up of an offstage Richard as he pretends to resist the crowd’s clamoring for his ascension to the throne. And though every modern Shakespearean production seems to employ a percussionist or two, their use here well signals the growing tension.

The ensemble, a mixture of American and British actors, offer good support, with particularly striking turns by Gemma Jones, scarily intense as the wronged Queen Margaret; Haydn Gwynne, haughtily imperious as Queen Elizabeth; and Annabel Scholey, touchingly vulnerable as Lady Anne.

But the evening is all about Spacey, whose physical energy and emotional intensity never flags in the second longest Shakespearean role after Hamlet. His obvious exhaustion at the curtain call, just after a terrific coup de theatre in which Richard’s corpse is displayed to the audience in a manner recalling Benito Mussolini’s, seems entirely deserved.

BAM Harvey Theater, 651 Fulton St., Brooklyn. 718-636-4100. www.bam.org. Through March 4.