By ROBERT LLOYD
March 25, 2009
The Royal Shakespeare Company's "King Lear," directed by Trevor Nunn and starring Ian McKellen, which played here at UCLA's Royce Hall in October 2007 -- without me in the audience, unfortunately -- becomes available to all Americans tonight via the PBS “Great Performances” series. It's not a straight live filming of the stage production but has been redesigned for television, though with the same players wearing, as far as I can tell, the same clothes.
Times theater critic Charles McNulty, reviewing the UCLA performance, found the acting at times overly large, but while there is still a bit of vamping among the villains, the playing must have been dialed down for the camera. (And McKellen's brief onstage nudity -- he drops his pants -- happens out of frame.) In my less-than-expert, regular-guy-who-happens-to-love-Shakespeare opinion, it's certainly worth watching. I'm no scholar of this stuff, but Shakespeare didn't write for scholars; he wrote for the contemporary equivalent of a television audience, which is to say, for everyone, though at a higher level of poetry and thematic purpose and with more subtlety and psychological insight than TV usually wants or gets. But he was Shakespeare, after all.
With certain brief exceptions, this is an easily intelligible, ultimately moving production of a monumental play -- towering and deep, full of dread and mystery, wind and rain, hate and love -- about the limits of human power and what a drag it is getting old. Do I need to say that it's the story of a king who prematurely divides his lands among his daughters, with an eye to becoming their semiretired permanent shared houseguest? Even in a comedy, this plan would lead to trouble.
Watch it
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/gperf/episodes/king-lear/watch-the-play/487">here.
King Lear - Ian McKellen
Goneril - Frances Barber
Regan - Monica Dolan
Cordelia - Romola Garai
Albany - Julian Harries
Cornwall - Guy Williams
Gloucester - William Gaunt
Edgar - Ben Meyjes
Edmund - Philip Winchester
Kent - Jonathon Hyde
Fool - Sylvester McCoy
The monumental tragedy of an old king who decides to divide his kingdom among his daughters, but imposes a love test on each to merit her portion. His youngest daughter, Cordelia, refuses to flatter him falsely, sending Lear into a rage. He withdraws her portion, exiles his best friend, and generally becomes increasingly irrational. Cordelia leaves to marry the King of France. His eldest daughters subsequently turn on him, finally tossing him out into a stormy night. In a parallel plot, Lear’s close friend Gloucester succumbs to the plot of Edmund, his bastard son, who wants the rights of a legitimate son. As this plot develops, Gloucester’s legitimate son Edgar must flee and disguise himself, as Edmund becomes sexually embroiled with Lear’s two daughters, and with them the politics of the kingdom. As Lear rails against man and nature during a violent storm on the heath, Gloucester becomes involved in an invasion from France. Betrayed by Edmund, he loses both his eyes. In this wretched state he attempts suicide, but is spared by Edgar. He then meets Lear in a reunion of madness and blindness - “reason in madness” as Edgar describes it. Next Lear reunites with Cordelia in a moment of sublime forgiveness. But the war is lost. Edmund has Cordelia hung while in prison. One daughter poisons the other, then commits suicide. Edgar kills Edmund in a duel, but not in time to save Cordelia. Lear finally dies over her dead body in grief. As one of those still alive at the end observes, “our present business is general woe.”Shakespeare is so... primal.
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