King Lear
By William Shakespeare
Shakespeare’s Globe
Friday 22nd September 2017, 14.oo
Directed by Nancy Meckler
Designed by Rosanna Vize
Composer Simon Slater
CAST
Emily Bruni – Goneril
Louisa Beadel – Ensemble / Musician
Burt Caesar – Gloucester
Ralph Davis – Edmund
Joshua James – Edgar
Kevin R McNally – Lear
Chris Nayak – Oswald
Loren O’Dair – Fool
Thomas Padden – Albany
Saskia Reeves – Kent
Sirine Saba – Regan
Faz Singhateh – Cornwall
Kenton Thomas – Ensemble
Buom Tihngang – France
Anjana Vasan – Cordelia
I’m used to starting reviews of King Lear by wondering why I’m seeing it again, as it was never a favourite play. Usually the casting of an ever more famous thespian as Lear makes it essential (as with Sir Ian McKellan at Chichester next month), though here it was more a case of seeing every Globe Shakespeare I can. Reviews agree that Kevin R McNally holds his own with the theatrical greats we expect to see in the role.
I wondered why they kept swathing the stage and pillars of the Globe under Emma Rice’s regime, as if they were always ashamed of the building itself somehow. There is a temporary carpentry workshop on the Globe patio … on the sides they reproduce the named paving stones from sponsors that it has covered. They never needed it in the past, because the basic concept was supposed to be a reproduction of a Shakespearean theatre: a fixed building with minimal set dressing. This year, this play and Much Ado About Nothing and Boudica require major carpentry to erect the set covering the building.
The stage in the interval: half the cladding has gone
There must be a pillar-swathing department too, though here we begin by having a troupe of tattered people who might be the homeless, or immigrants, come on and perform a pre-piece before. The doors are boarded up with KEEP OUT notices. They break down the doors, using a factory / warehouse metal transport cage to smash the stage right entrance.
We have an ugly industrial decay setting. Gradually they tear down down some of the swathing, to reveal the theatre again. One pillar gets unswathed at the end of the first half. McNally removes the other during the curtain call. At the end of Emma Rice’s regime, this is symbolic (back to the Globe pre-2016) though at odds with this play! It’s an unpleasant looking set, but the costumes are worse. We’re used to dressing up box mixes. This is sub- Cats Protection League charity shop … i.e. Not a smart blonde woodwork Oxfam / British Heart Foundation charity shop, but one with piles of smelly junk. Nobility is conveyed by bits of tatty fur. The women end up in unflattering thin nylon slips much of the time. Gloucester is incongruous in a crimson smoking jacket, but then it matches his performance from a different era to everyone else. Grey long johns are worn for ensemble work, which everyone has to do. Ugly set. Ugly costumes.
The dividing the kingdom scene. L to R: Lear, Regan, Burgundy, Cordelia, France, Gloucester at rear, Cornwall.
I thought our more traditional critics liked it (4 and 3 stars) because of the lack of disco recorded sound, as mentioned in their reviews.
No disco-dancing yet,” someone remarked in the interval. Given this theatre’s recent record of treating Shakespeare as a bitter pill that needs to be extensively sugared, that was a relief. Michael Billington, The Guardian.
I kind of missed that. If this is a nod towards post-Emma Rice, as one suggests, then bring her back! But it isn’t. There’s that chipboard covered set. They use recorded SFX a lot in spite of having a band. The whole thing is lit by many lights, flickering blue and yellow in the storm.It might look good at night, but in the very sunny afternoon, was simply an incredibly annoying glow, and then flicker, all round the building. Poor Tom had to go and sit next to a footlight to get his muddy body enhanced (or not when he moved six inches) by electric blue UV. Awful lighting plot. Zero stars for both set and costume.
How far does the concept of a bunch of street people putting on a show go? Does it extend into the casting and performance decisions? Some are odd. Kent gets gender-blinded (NB it’s Gloucester who gets physically blinded) and Kent starts out as the only reasonably smartly dressed person as Lady Kent. She then dresses up a man and starts speaking in Estuary when Kent gets banished. Saskia Reeves did this particularly well, but the result is a diminutive comic Kent in man’s trousers. So Kent becomes a pantomime brokers’ men double act with a Brummy accented Oswald complete with funny stick fight. I had never envisaged Kent and Oswald as a comedy duo. Chris Nayak was was a very funny Demetrius at the RSC last year, and Oswald was somewhat minor for his talent, though he made the most of playing for comedy. Why Brummy (Birmingham)? It always works as funny in a Shakespearean context. A cheap route to a laugh in fact, just as Glasgow or Belfast get over-used as a cheap route to aggressiveness. The Fool was also cast as female, but The Fool is outside gender anyway. Not a problem, though why give her an accordion she can’t play? She can and does play violin in the background.
Gloucester is the really odd deeply problematic performance. He plays it in his smoking jacket like a 1950s luvvie in an amateur production, with rolling rich delivery … he is very clear, at least. Is that what the director intended with the costume choice? If so, as a street person cast in a Shakespearean role as he might imagine Sir Laurence Olivier doing it, he’s doing it very well. If not, it’s the worst Gloucester I’ve ever seen clashing with everyone else. That goes through to the weakest blinding scene I’ve ever seen, done in the ubiquitous transportation cage with Cornwall’s fingers. It is colour blind. A black Gloucester has two white sons, but then we never see their mother.
That transportation cage proves very useful in removing the dead bodies. On dead bodies, we both noted when the dead Cordelia was laid out on the stage. She had that awful nylon petticoat true, but when you’re dead, pulling the hem down to preserve your modesty undermines the tragedy. She should have been given a decent costume in the first place. Anjana Vasan as Cordelia is a fine actress as we noted with her Hermia last year, and Galileo’s daughter this year. Cordelia has always been a crap role, being off stage for most of the play. Anjana Vasan is physically perfect for it. You need to cast as slight and slim as possible when an older man has to carry you about the stage … which McNally did. Anthony Sher dodged that task in the RSC production in 2016 (which is returning to the RSC in 2018, I see). The director did make use of her, having Cordelia do several added flits across the stage, and in changed costume, doing a bit of table shifting too.
Lear and Gloucester
Edgar and Edmund, Gloucester’s sons to match Lear’s daughters, are plum parts. Edgar (Joshua James) looked suitably effete and floppy haired when gulled by Edmund. But he is played as too open-mouthed dumb and easily fooled. Edmund (Ralph Davis) is a great role, and he did all that straight to audience stuff with clarity and confidence. Very good. Edgar has to be Poor Tom, and I usually dislike the Poor Tom and Fool parts in King Lear, and I certainly did here. You have to be very inventive to make either work, though the RSC succeeded in 2016. Poor Tom has to act a lot with Gloucester and their vocal styles were just so at variance here.
Regan (Sirine Saba)
Goneril (Emily Bruni) and Regan (Sirine Saba) both looked sufficently scary. Both shone amidst the dross, though costume would have helped if they’d been allocated something half-decent. Regan’s great hair took the eye away from the costume, and she was notably powerful in the role. Albany (Thomas Padden) was tall thin, balding. Cornwall (Faz Singhateh) looked almost square, like a body builder, a good visual contrast, which may have been the over-riding casting decision. Their parts were minor.
The only bit that eschewed industrial detritus and charity shop costume was the use of massed drumming by most of the cast for the storm, and the drumming was an economical way to turn the France-Britain conflict into a brief drumming dance.
Kevin McNally was very good. He found new and intriguing timing on lines and had lead actor charisma. One example, a favourite (to Goneril):
LEAR: But yet thou art my flesh., my blood, my daughter
Or rather a disease that lies within my flesh,
which I must needs call mine; thou art a boil
A plague sore, an embossed carbuncle
In my corrupted blood. But I’ll not chide thee.
The pause and change of voice for But I’ll not chide thee drew one of the biggest laughs of the afternoon (LATER NOTE: much louder than Ian McKellen drew two weeks later … he did time it better here). There is always something that’s the best you’ve seen it done, and McNally did it on several lines. It wasn’t a nuanced Lear at all, but he is a powerful presence if somewhat generic with his white Captain Birdseye / Ernest Hemingway beard.
It’s cut quite a bit to bring it in at 2 hours 45 minutes (excluding interval) but I have never looked at my watch at The Globe as often as I did between 4.30 and 5.05. That sums up my verdict. It was among the worst productions I’ve seen at The Globe (on a par with the abysmal Romeo & Juliet this year), and not only because of dire set and costumes and lighting. I didn’t like the concept at all, nor many of the performances. It seemed Amateur Dramatic Society at times, and I concede that may have been the intent leading on from the street people start. Too subtle a move if so.
Harsh? Please do note that the Telegraph gave it four stars, and The Guardian three, They’re both online. Well, I usually veer to generous on star ratings. It’s The Globe, and it’s always worth being there. A beautiful sunny day. Interesting drumming. Interesting lead role. Like Romeo & Juliet this year, it was unfortunately very poor in concept, direction and execution. Two stars overall is for me, generous. My companion suggests one star. On applause, Boudica, a day later, got vastly more, and deservedly so.
**
WHAT THE PAPERS SAID:
I’m expanding this with quotes. Not everyone agrees with me.
4
Domenic Cavendish, Telegraph, ****
But there’s an underlying through-line of intelligence and sensitivity, and strong supporting performances abound. Saskia Reeves gives us a touching, plausible, gender-switched Kent, turning mock-blokey (and mockney too) after banishment. Ralph Davis’s scheming Edmund makes every line sing with clarity, while the scrawny, hypnotically watchable Joshua James, as his calumnied and betrayed brother Edgar, looks to me like a star in the making.
3
Michael Billington, Guardian ***
I’ve seen more exciting Lears, but at least Meckler’s production is more concerned, unlike the Globe’s dismal Romeo and Juliet, with poor people than Village People.
Paul Taylor, The Independent ***
Not a great production, but an honourable one that gathers to a gutting climax.
Sarah Hemming, Financial Times ***
Henry Hitchings, Evening Standard, ***
This isn’t a harrowing or richly panoramic King Lear. But it makes confident use of the Globe’s ample space, and the images of national disunity and civil war have an uncomfortable resonance
Tim Bano, The Stage ***
Andrzej Lukowski, Time Out ***
A ‘Lear’ for the ages? Nuh-uh. But it’s a decent, dignified one, that shows even the Globe can strike a restrained note in these dark times.
2
Anne Treneman, The Times **
LINKS ON THIS BLOG
OTHER PRODUCTIONS OF KING LEAR REVIEWED HERE:
- King Lear – David Haig Bath Theatre Royal
- King Lear Frank Langella Chichester Minerva
- King Lear – Russell-Beale National Theatre
- King Lear- Barrie Rutter, Northern Broadsides tour, directed by Jonathan Miller, Bath Theatre Royal
- King Lear – Antony Sher, RSC 2016
- King Lear -Kevin R McNally, Globe2017
- King Lear – Ian McKellen, Chichester Minerva, 2017
NANCY MECKLER
All’s Well That Ends Well, RSC 2013
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, RSC 2011
ANJANA VASAN
Life of Galileo, Young Vic, 2017 (Virginia)
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Globe 2016 (Hermia)
JOSHUA JAMES
Life of Galileo, Young Vic, 2017 (Ludovico + various)
The Seagull, Chichester 2015 (Konstantin)
Platonov, Chichester 2015 (Dr Triletsky)
CHRIS NAYAK
Much Ado About Nothing, RSC 2015, 2016 (Borachio)
Love’s Labours Lost, RSC 2015, 2016
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, RSC 2016 (Demetrius)
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