Theatre Revue - Week 4 (c) - the King Lear edition

[lorannah]

So this week I've also seen:

13. 27th January 2011 - King Lear, Donmar Warehouse (Shakespeare)
14. 29th January 2011 - King Lear, RSC at the Roundhouse (Shakespeare)

Originally  I was going to do this weeks shows as three posts, instead of the four that it's ended up as and that's mostly due to the two Lear's. Given that I saw them one after another and it's inevitable that I'm going to end up comparing the two - it seemed silly not to write about them together. Anyhow - I'm extrememly glad that I saw both of them but as experiences go, it was something akin to being repeatedly battered around the head - in the best way possibly - but still battered. By the end of the pair, I felt like my brain had bled out of my ears and that I desperately needed a drink (may be one of only two people who associate Shakespeare with whisky). I really can't imagine how the actors get through these plays, especially twice a day.

KING LEAR - Donmar Warehouse



The great and good have been trying to get tickets to this, so I knew my only hope was to queue up ridiculously early (though not as ridiculously early as planned as I managed to oversleep). Thankfully my experience of day seating, even in the cold of January, is that it's usually mostly fun. You tend to build an odd sense of community, you're rooting for each other and helping each other out and the people you're with are interesting. It's ace, even if like us you're a bit worried that the show might be cancelled. Luckily we were the first show Jacobi did after his laryngitis and I even managed to get a seat for it.

Unfortunately I didn't enjoy this as much as I might - mostly this was down to the audience. The vast majority of the theatre had been taken by a large school party and whilst I'm usually pleased to see schools at the theatre and they rarely annoy me - this had to be the exception to the rule. I think it was that they so outnumbered everyone else in the audience, that their reactions drowned out and overpowered anyone elses. Including my own. It made it very difficult for me to connect properly to the production. Especially problematic was that they seemed amused enough just to find themselves at the theatre that everything made them burst into roaring laughter - especially Lear's madness (though poor Amit Shah, playing Oswald, also struggled - as early on they decided he was hilarious and no matter what he said it was greeted with more loud laughs). I felt sorry for the cast as it felt like they were fighting a loosing battle. On top of which, there were loudly whispered conversations, noisy sweets and the constant presence of mobile phones. By the end I was about ready to tear my hair out and I wasn't sure if my pounding headache was down to them or the play.

As well as this, my seats were, unsurprisingly, not the best. I was far over to the side and though I only rarely missed any action, I did feel a little left out - the cast very rarely seemed to play anything towards my side of the theatre. I don't, in fact, remember a single occasion when I was able to get a clear view of Jacobi's expression and I suspect, based on others comments that I truly missed out there. He was also most likely not on his best form, given how recently he'd been ill. Whilst other cast members, Gina McKee especially, seemed to be coming down with the lurgy. Between the illnesses going around and the difficulties with the audience, the production seemed to lack energy. But, like with any other criticisms I'm overly aware that they might simply be down to my distorted experience of the production.

That being the case, I feel oddly unqualified to discuss Jacobi's performance as Lear. The emotions were beautifully and subtly captured, even if I wasn't often in a position to appreciate it fully. The ending particularly was stunning, the despair as he carried on Cordelia was palpable and very moving (the first thing that really shut the school up) and I found his whispered start to the storm scene was great, it really demanded that you paid attention. I found the madness less moving, or perhaps I should say less familiar though I will go into that properly below, he was clearly distracted, his thoughts flitting from one thing to another but it was a gentler sort of madness for the most part and it didn't resonate with me. Interestingly as well, given that most reviews describe this as the familial Lear against the RSC's political Lear - I came away without a strong sense of the relationships between them - though it was nice to see genuine tenderness between Lear and Cordelia. I also really loved Gina McKee as Goneril, despite the fact her voice was going. Just the right amount of denied sensuality and frustration.

I also really liked Gwilym Lee as Edgar, one of the more energetic performances and I think he walked the line between madness and playacting excellently. There was also a moment which has really stuck with me, when he was curled up on the floor, clinging to Lear and from beneath his arm we could see his eye peering up at us - dark against all the whiteness surrounding it. It was an incredibly striking image. I found, as well, Alec Newman's performance as Edmund really interesting - he interacted with the audience well, but what really caught my attention was the way it felt that events got away from him - the attention of the two queens was thrust upon him rather than desired and it got out of control and caused his downfall. I've not thought of it played that way before and I rather liked it.

As mentioned briefly above and as evident from the pictures - the set and most of the auditorium had been whitewashed muddily - it was an interesting effect and there were moments when it worked incredibly well. I really really loved how they visualised the storm - the effect of the light flashing through the gaps in the boarding was incredibly effective and slightly disorientating. There was also a moment when the light of a doorway spilled across the stage, creating a powerful inverse silhouette of Edmund. I was hopeful this was going to issue in a richer lighting palette in the second half - but it mostly seemed to return to the stark lighting from before - which again might have worked better for me if I'd been in a better position to appreciate the clarity of the emotions. I was, luckily, in a perfect position to appreciate the gorgeous sound design from start to finish - I love Adam Cork's work and this was excellently atmospheric.

Although I feel like I've been complaining a lot here, it was genuinely an excellent production - it's just a shame that external factors got in the way of appreciation of it.



KING LEAR - RSC at the Roundhouse



For me the RSC production won out in the battle of the Lears - though it didn't really feel like a fair fight - between the Donmar's bad audience, Jacobi's illness, my awesome seats at the Roundhouse, the fact that this is a repeat visit so I'm able to pick out details, an interesting behind the scenes type thing in the morning and that I come pre-programmed to be fond of the actors - it was practically a David and Goliath scenario.

Anyway on to what I really loved about the production - I think it mostly boils down to the Family Lear in all it's crazy glory (which was also what I loved in Romeo and Juliet - this is clearly one of my things). As I mentioned in the Donmar review, this is often seen as the political Lear to compliment it's family focus - and whilst this is true - I personally found the family dynamics much more fascinating. The relationships between each of the members was finely and distinctively drawn. Particularly the way Lear saw and treated his daughters - he has a very set opinion of who each of them is or should be and it makes him treat them very differently. It warps the family and is the root cause in their destruction.

So he's incredibly dismissive of Goneril throughout, treating her as if she's a disappointment, and it brings out an almost desperate desire in her to win his love - she actually cares about their relationship and it felt like it was the ultimate failure of that (as well as her lacklustre marriage) that drove her towards Edmund. In contrast to this desire for Lear's affection, Regan is all but openly dismissive and the sense that she doesn't like or admire her father is palpable. It is a cruelty that he so openly gives her the love denied to Goneril (it's almost unsurprising how extreme Goneril's reaction to loosing Edmund, the new focus of her father's love, to her sister again) . Though there's something oddly unsettling about the borderline incestuous nature to the way Hicks plays these scenes and I think it's even more interesting that he chooses to direct all the insults concerning the loss of beauty at Regan, whilst Goneril receives the ones about being barren (I found these insults truly horrible and some of the most distressing moments in the play) - worse, these insults touch Goneril in a way they don't Regan. Both Kelly Hunter and Katy Stephens are absolutely stunning throughout the play - their littlest expressions reveal so much. I love them both deeply in this.

I also found myself really warming to Samantha Young for one of the first times, particularly in the early scenes, though I still think Cordelia is a fairly thankless role. What I enjoyed here was that they weren't trying to make her relationship perfect - she wasn't really set up to contrast her bad sisters. Her relationship with Lear was just as unrealistic and flawed as the others - his perception of her perfection is smothering her and it gives her rebellion against his demand added depth - it takes it from being a small moment, a misunderstanding leading to tragedy - and adds to this sense they are tearing each other apart. Similarly the relationship is complicated - there is deep seated jealousy from the outset, but I felt Cordelia's anger during the goodbye scene was as much due to her sister's failure to intervene on her behalf than from any real prescience of what was to follow. I loved it.

One possibly negative side effect of how flawed these four characters are portrayed here, is it does rob them of sympathy, though not completely pity. One area where Jacobi completely blew Hicks out of the water was his reaction to Cordelia's death, it was much more emotionally powerful, because their relationship was genuinely caring. For me, this lack of sympathy isn't a problem, I like it which possibly says more about me than I'd like. I also think it's where the wider focus of the production comes into place. Seeing the political consequences and implications of this families failures allows us to redirect our sympathy outside them. Instead we can care about Kent and Gloucester and Edgar and even Edmund and the Fool. Plus I liked that seeing Lear's Knights on stage, gave a much realer sense of what dismissing them meant, whilst it also made Goneril's distress more tangible.

The other relationship that really struck me on this viewing - was the one between Lear and the Fool, which for me seemed to be the real contrast here against the relationship with his daughters. This role has got, theatre wise, a lot of attention recently given Kathryn Hunter's departure from the RSC, leaving her understudy Sophie Russell to step in. This was a bit odd for me as I rather liked Hunter's Fool (though I generally find the fool's difficult, they seem often to be the thing that has aged most) but am simultaneously a massive fan of Russell (I've seen her to do some superb roles at the RSC - though sadly mostly in the plays with less circulation). In the end I feel glad to have seen both and took different things away from them. With Russell's fool, although she's referred to throughout as 'boy' I felt perfectly able, though not necessarily expected, to think of her as a girl in boys clothing - and for this to be the sort of comfortable, accepted lie between the pair that we see in Sonnet 138. This had the affect for me of placing her at a similar age to his daughters and the relationship we see is incredibly different. The sweetness and affection here is much more genuine and there's an honesty to the relationship. In this production the Fool seems to be the only person who can chide Lear when he is wrong but is also constantly trying to advise him and help him. This is the relationship he should have had with his daughters. There's a moment in Russell's performance in her final scene where she is soothing Lear, once he is finally asleep and you see her make the choice silently to leave him - which I found completely heartbreaking.

While this play has ended up being mostly about the girls for me, there are lots of excellent performances - though I don't think it's his best role, I really do like Darrell Da Silva as Kent in this (one of my favourite moments anywhere in Shakespeare is Kent's final lines) - his long list of insults against Oswald is stunning (poor James Tucker, he's spent the entire year being beaten up by Da Silva). Geoffrey Freshwater also makes my heart swell with all the things that are good in the world as Gloucester, it's an excellent performance. Charles Aitken is also very good as Edgar and I was pleased to see a great deal of improvement in Tunji Kassim's Edmund which I hadn't liked earlier in the year. He's grown into the role, though it was still entirely unfair to him that we'd been given a snippet of Adam Burton's Edmund in the morning at the Unwrapped - who I adored in the role when O saw the understudy run.

There's of course one person left to discuss performance wise, though I have touched on him - Hicks. I truly think his Lear is astounding - something of a masterpiece. A lot of that is summed up for me in the way he plays the madness scenes. I said above that for me Jacobi's madness lacked familiarity for me which needs, I think, a little explaining. Both my grandfather's lost their minds before they died - the most vivid of those memories for me are of my Welsh grandfather who stopped being able to speak English - from my earliest memories I wasn't able to communicate with him, the only connection I was able to build was through observation. Hicks reminded me of him to an almost painful extent - he'd captured not just the confusion but also the blankness and the changeability and the pure impotent rage and frustration. Though this is obviously not the only way people go mad, it did give it extra power for me. It was a personal reaction. It was also difficult to watch and the initial burst of surprised laughter at his appearance faded away quickly. It's almost as if he carries on each moment just too long and just long enough - he takes it to the point you're uncomfortable and then switches it so you can never get used to it and settle. It pretty much blows my mind. In some ways as well I think this also robs the ending somewhat, once you've hit that climax it's difficult to think that he could ever return from it - it's already over. We'd seen the explosion and now the collapse was inevitable, it was just a matter of time.

Given that I'm so enamoured with the performances in this, I'm actually left not sure how I feel entirely about the production itself. I like the decrepit nature of the set and unlike a lot of reviewers I've seen wasn't upset by the mixture of clothing eras seen throughout. Particularly since in the Unwrapped they were talking about a framing device they'd used in rehearsals which I don't think you necessarily need to be aware of to enjoy the show, but which I liked knowing as it gave it some interesting echoes for me. The idea they started with is that this is taking place in an abandoned munitions factory in World War I and that the performance is about the people involved working through the trauma they've experienced - possibly entirely in the head of the soldier played by Charles Aitkens we see at the very beginning before the show's even started - he's also the last one there at the end. I kind of loved the idea. I certainly loved the invocation of WWI - the way it pulls together ideas of lost innocence and changing times and the moments of trauma that causes those things. I also felt that the costumes and the styles and the eras that were chosen often said something interesting about the characters wearing them.

All the physical effects were a bit less effective for me, I didn't hate them all the fizzing and flashing lights and collapsing scenery but sometimes I felt they were a bit overdone and I'm not sure if they were actually enriching the experience much for me. I also still can't really work out how I feel about Lear's actual soaking - it felt a bit much, but was visually striking and created a visceral reaction. You really felt for Hicks in those moments, for his physical distress. Plus I have to say cutting mid storm was an awesome decision as it made it feel like it had gone on for ever. I did really like some of the more bloody effects as well (MOAR BLOOD!) - especially when Katy Stephens slit Paul Hamilton's throat with practically a fountain of blood in our direction.


Anyway I have to stop sometime - and though I have not really drawn a conclusion and feel like I have shortchanged the Donmar production awfully - I think this is as good a place as any.