Royal Shakespeare Company
State Theatre, Victorian Art Centre, July 28 to Aug 4, 2007
Reviewer: Kate Herbert on July 28, 2007
In Shakespeare’s tragedy, King Lear, natural laws are inverted; children betray parents, sibling murders sibling, the good are exiled, the wicked elevated, the wise ignored, the innocent executed and a King descends into madness.
King Lear (Ian McKellan), a proud, powerful father, banishes his loving, plain-speaking child, Cordelia (Romola Garai), and foolishly divides his kingdom between his grasping daughters, Goneril (Frances Barber) and Regan (Monica Dolan). His folly strips him of power and respect.
McKellan’s Lear begins as tyrannical and proud, oblivious to his own vulnerability. He is commanding but playful and his division of kingdom is a game to taunt his daughters. His fatal flaw is his inability to differentiate the treacherous flattery of Goneril and Regan from the genuine love of Cordelia (Romola Garai) and Kent (Jonathan Hyde).
Lear is like an infant dragged screaming from the womb into the light. To escape his daughters’ treachery he descends into madness, travelling from pride to disbelief, frustration to rage and despair. “How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child,” he laments. Lear’s defencelessness is heartbreaking in the achingly painful storm scene. He is mankind stripped of all regalia: “a bare, forked animal”.
When Lear recovers his wits, McKellan appears monkish, hopeful of a peaceful life with Cordelia then inconsolable at her death. He journeys from greatness with ignorance toward impotence with wisdom. As Lear’s mind and power diminish, Christopher Oram’s architectural design cunningly disintegrates.
The poignant scene between tragic shells of former great men, the distracted Lear and the maimed Gloucester (William Gaunt), is compelling. Gaunt’s performance is sympathetic and restrained, revealing kindness, humour and pathos in Gloucester.
Barber’s Goneril is conniving, passionate and wicked. Dolan’s Regan is grotesque, swilling wine and cheering as Gloucester’s eyes are gruesomely gouged. Unfortunately, Garai’s Cordelia lacks the dignity and weight to balance her sisters’ treachery. Cordelia’s gaucheness in the opening does not elicit sympathy and her later scenes crave a young Queen’s nobility and grace.
Guy Williams is vicious and self-serving as Cornwall and Julian Harries brings dignity to “milk-livered” Albany. Hyde is rich-voiced and distinguished as the saucily blunt Kent and Sylvester McCoy’s Fool is a Music Hall clown. Phillip Winchester plays Edmund with a rather too camp villainy and Ben Meyjes captures Edgar’s feigned madness but is too cool facing his father’s suffering.
Trevor Nunn’s direction of the large ensemble is taut, ensuring that Shakespeare’s text is lucid and that characters and relationships are emotionally complex. His location of the production in pre-revolutionary Russia provides a parallel to Lear’s totalitarian regime but does not further illuminate the play. This riveting if conventional production is a showcase for McKellan’s consummate talent and enlivens Lear for a contemporary audience.
By Kate Herbert
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