My new Shakespeare project for this year was King Lear. Coming on the heels of last year's discovery of MacBeth, I set to work discovering this other, older king, one who gives not takes. My Lear year culminated last night in seeing it on stage in a state of the art, touring production with an all name cast.
It was emotionally demanding. I lived in despair for the last two acts, having the sensation for a good 30 minutes that I was sliding down a slate roof, straining for traction with my fingernails and arriving at the end, not a precipice but something more like abandonment. Leaving the theater I felt a little ill and wanted no more mention of the characters or themes. I was Leared out.
Now, the next morning I can write a little about it. Hopefully further little blossoms of reflection will continue to sprout for a few days.
I'm new to King Lear and had prepared by reading only the first three acts in a heavily annotated Sparks Notes edition and then hearing those same first three acts on my iPod a few times. I left the last two acts undiscovered though so that in the watching I could have some motivation and involvement in their discovery.
Main memories:
1) Commenting here not on the particular actors but on the roles as written, Cordelia and Lear didn't look all that fun to play. Cordelia is just a virtuous character but I didn't come away with any deep revelations more than her virtue, honesty and loyalty, qualities all stellar but uninteresting to see here. Blame the age of irony? Cordelia's suffering was played too straight, pedantically instructive.
2)Lear himself, the role, not the actor, too, seems less interesting than the roles around him. His lines are relatively unintersting taken as individual bits. I suspect what is worthy in contemplating the character King Lear is what you come up with when you contemplate his motivations. You try to read between the lines during his bizarre decisions in the First Act and then for the rest of the play are left evaluating the gap between how he feels versus how you would feel if him. The regret and confusion of the lost and stumbling King felt to me like the whorling of my 2AM staring at the ceiling self reevaluating a job interview or a botched romantic encounter.
3) There was great physical acting from The Fool. As he talked he would juggle imaginary balls, he would mimic the other actors, he would hold a pose against the floor or wall that emphasized his disrespect for who he was addressing. With regards to Goneril he spoke while refusing to look at her, or he evaluated her with a judgemental gaze, or he showed her his bottom as she passed by.
4) Body language was great too from the scoundrel bastard Edmund. He slouched deep as the shape of a question mark when in the presence of the ascendant daughters or dukes and stood open, chest thrust out when relaying his private thoughts of ambition and complaining of his bastard baseness. His slouch pose, whether in fawning or in truly felt bastard shame was so deep that his hands hovered just a few inches above his knees sometimes, looking at the floorboards while people addressed him -- really dramatic.
5) The actors last night all seemed a bit too bellowing for my taste. I've only seen Shakespeare on stage a half dozen times but this cast had the most yelling quality. Only in the last third, spinning off into daisy plucking dementia did the King settle into something quieter, a lost, spacy, wistful delivery. And he was deliberately quiet in Act III; wandering lost in the storm, they actually had him whispering (into a microphone, luckily) his lines, momentarily hushing the wind that had left "hardly a bush for miles around".
6) The plucking of Gloucester's eyes was done gleefully by the ascendent Duke, who made us all gasp when he noisily flung the second eyeball, it making a wet thud as it ricoceted off of the wall, two streams of blood covering Gloucester's eyes and white shirt for his remaining scenes.
On the whole it was a great, unpleasant evening at the theater, which means, since it's Lear, we can judge the production a success.
The tragedies, King Lear and MacBeth left me hopeless, whereas ones like Othello and Hamlet are alwayslike dreams I can imagine dwelling inside, subconsciously thinking that with so many sympathetic characters maybe they'll turn out alright.
Poor Tom:
There's an abler local blog review than mine at BedStuy Patch.
Recent Comments