King Lear is not my favourite of Shakespeare's plays. Lear is moody,
egocentric, demanding, unaccommodating, brutal, and crude; he annoys me. Even
his fool, the lowest member of the court, continually mocks him for his
stupidity and obstinacy. How Kent and Cordelia remain true to such pompous,
attention-seeking fool is beyond me.
However, as a piece of theatre, it is hard to come across another
play that demands so much from its cast. How should the madness of Lear be
portrayed? How satirical and scathing can the fool be? Is Cordelia a
weak-willed passionless excuse for a person, or a woman who knows her own mind
and possesses more than a degree or two of her father’s obstinacy? These
questions make any production of Lear interesting to watch in terms of the
acting and directing, but I’m never going to be able to enjoy watching
Gloucester have his eyeballs plucked out with a spoon. Just forward wind that
section if you ever watch the 1971 version with Paul Schofield. Gruesome doesn’t
cut it.
So I was a little nervous turning up at the Olivier to watch
Sam Mendes’ new production with Simon Russell Beale. Not least because I was
sneaking in with a cheap under 18 ticket and looked like a complete loner
because my friend was running late. However, the lights went down and it was a
strong start. Set in a modern dictatorship, the play begins with a press
conference. Each of the daughters sits at a table opposite Lear in front of a
microphone. The seat next to Cordelia remains poignantly empty, separating her
from her sisters and heightening her vulnerability. He enters.
Now lots of journalists have criticised Beale for not being
intimidating enough; one review in the Telegraph pointed out that his height
prevented him from being able tower over his daughters. I fail to see, Charles
Spencer, how that is relevant. I have never imagined that Lear was meant to be
intimidating, physically. He is meant to be old with an erratic temper as he
loses his mind. Beale’s Lear was unreasonable, crude, obnoxious, and generally
everything I dislike about King Lear, so I thought he portrayed him perfectly
accurately.
The opening scene showed both him and Anna Maxwell Martin at
their best as Beale turned over tables and stomped across the stage. Anna
Maxwell Martin surpassed herself as an erratic, horny Regan slinking around the
stage and provocatively perching on anything with a penis (including her
father). Kate Fleetwood was good as an exacting Goneril but overshadowed by
Martin’s stage presence. It was interesting to watch Olivia Vinall’s Cordelia
who displayed more character and more enthusiasm than I have ever seen before.
Her moving performance and bitter good bye to her sisters made her memorable
and in a play where she hardly appears and is rarely mentioned.
The most interesting aspect of the whole play was Sam
Mendes’ interpretation of the fool. Adrian Scarborough was brilliantly scathing
of Lear and provided some much need vitality to the stage with his songs and
witty putting downs of King Lear. The addition of the fool’s death was one I
was not expecting. The bloodied baton and the fool’s dangling foot from the
bath tub, serves for a very disturbing end to the scene. As a plot device,
having Lear kill the fool at this point in the play signifies Lear’s final descent
to madness and the death of his rationality. However, it was overly theatrical
and gruesome, which is pretty typical of the whole play. It felt like Mendes
had finally been given the big budget he has always longed for and, like a
student confronted with free dominoes, gone a bit overboard with the special
effects. Mendes has certainly reached a career climax in this production but I
don’t think that was necessarily a good thing. The moving stage and flashing
lights seemed out of place and unnecessary when accompanied by such brilliant
acting.
By the end Edgar was the only sane and relatable character.
He went from an oblivious (hungover)and confused unemployed youth, to a noble a
son trying to save those he loves. The final scene saw Goneril and Regan dead
under the table whilst Cordelia and Lear were laid out as the true tragedies. Only
Edgar and Albany remain, grimly resigned to the events.
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