In Shakespeare’s King Lear, the Duke of Gloucester – bearing empty, bloody sockets where he once had eyes – tries to jump off the cliffs of Dover.
A well-wrought production of King Lear can feel much the same: like plummeting into an abyss of tragedy where depth is measured not in fathoms but in betrayals and grief.
King Lear is such a universe of disaster that a director has the luxury, if you can call it that, of choosing how wide or narrow to go. Will it be a Lear of such cosmic despair that it’s like watching entire galaxies crushed to oblivion in a black hole? Or a tragedy with the needle-sharp intimacy of a domestic hit job? Such is Shakespeare’s genius, the possibilities for devastation are almost endless. As the program note for Bell Shakespeare’s 2024 production observes, King Lear is a “domestic crisis wrapped in a political crisis inside an existential one”.
Director Peter Evans (assisted by Tiffany Wong) opts for an intimate, minimalist King Lear, performed in the Neilson Nutshell theatre configured in the round. This heightens the production’s intimacy and naturalism, the absence of standard front-facing theatrics making the audience feel like a fly on the wall.
The drawback is the fourth wall becomes more like an impenetrable ring, with at least a quarter of the audience seeing only the actors’ backs at any given time. Evans offsets this by having some of the performers rotate slowly as they speak. This works best in soliloquies – Darius Williams’s rage-filled turns as Edmund, for instance – but it’s not possible for the entire play.
The ultimate effect is like being in a crowd, trying to peer around people’s shoulders and heads and hearing voices without immediately discerning the speaker. For a play such as King Lear, where the subtlest facial expressions and gestures can be loaded with meaning, the distraction and distancing effect is not quite worth the naturalism pay-off. Different direction, or a three-sided thrust stage, like the Nutshell configuration in Evans’s Romeo and Juliet, might have struck a better balance.
Despite the in-the-round theatrical difficulties, Anna Tregloan’s set is a gorgeous example of achieving a lot with little. The stage floor is rough-rolled bronze, like a shield, with a central black circle evoking the fatal power vacuum that Lear creates. Metallic spirals and orbs are suspended from the ceiling, suggesting ruling celestial forces – as the Earl of Kent puts it, “the stars above us govern our conditions”.
Less successful are Tregloan’s all-black modern costumes. Some features on the garments would have compensated for the in-the-round distancing and disorientation. Tregloan has added design influences evoking the past – minimalist robes and circlet crowns that the royal characters occasionally wear (when and why is not really clear), and the Fool and Poor Tom get coloured costumes. These sit anachronistically against the chic blacks but overall are not too distracting.
Compared with other Shakespearean plays, costuming has significance in King Lear because it underscores the implications of social levelling, marks Lear’s transformation and prefigures his kingdom’s collapse. In his famous act three disrobing scene, the sight of naked Poor Tom compels Lear to exclaim in recognition, “Thou art the thing itself! Unaccommodated man is no more but such a poor, bare, forked animal thou art. Off, off, you lendings! Come, unbutton here.”
Shakespeare’s players – tellingly called The King’s Men – were beholden to King James I. It was bold, almost subversive, to have a kingly character physically demonstrate that his royal robes concealed the same “poor, bare, forked animal” as a mad beggar. But newer productions increasingly dispense with the garb of monarchy to connect with modern concerns about ageing. There are several productions, for example, where Lear appears as a retiree bundled in a wheelchair, complete with blanket or dressing-gown.
Ageing is a deeply significant issue but is often highlighted at the expense of the probing sociopolitical questions the very text of King Lear asks us. It’s pressingly relevant given questions surrounding the interplay between enormous power, wealth, leadership and senility currently plaguing the United States election, although Evans has said his approach is to sidestep contemporary parallels. In this production, with Lear wearing only black and the famous disrobing line so inconspicuous I couldn’t tell if it had been delivered quietly or cut completely, act three lost a lot of its potential power.
Evans has instead focused on the everyday interpersonal drama of King Lear. In the title role, much-loved theatre veteran Robert Menzies has adopted an interpretation of dementia. He is all fidgeting, fluttering hands, pattering speech and staring gaze. It’s a more domestic approach to the character, which can feel uncomfortably close to home and ultimately evokes pity (James Lugton’s Duke of Gloucester actually seems more kingly than Menzies’s Lear). I prefer Lear as the grand statesman whose fall becomes even more tragic in the context of his former power, but Menzies is convincing and poignant as this recognisably frail old man.
There are mixed levels of Shakespearean ability through the cast, with some patchiness in phrasing and syntax occasionally obscuring the dramatic richness of Shakespeare’s devastating language. Lugton’s Gloucester is commanding and Janine Watson’s Kent is also a standout, capturing Kent’s stoic combination of power and humility. Shameer Birges and Michael Wahr – resembling a Disney prince gone evil – are satisfying contrasts as Albany and Cornwall.
Tamara Lee Bailey’s approach to Regan blends high-bred politesse and scheming manipulation, while Lizzie Schebesta’s Goneril is more straightforward. Melissa Kahraman is better as the Fool than Cordelia, where she feels miscast. Darius Williams as Edmund gives a multifaceted portrayal vacillating between rage and meekness, though I would have liked his energetic complexity to increase rather than diminish towards the play’s climax. Alex King is all virtuous nobility as Edgar, Poor Tom and France, and deserves special mention for embodying manly athleticism in her duel with Edmund. Jeremi Campese rounds out the cast as a simpering Oswald.
Ben Cisterne’s lighting conjures everything from palace sconces and castle hearths to the wild storms of the open countryside: as the Fool tells Lear, “Here’s a night pities neither wise men nor fools”. Max Lyandvert’s sound design adds layers of atmosphere without being disruptive. His score gets under your skin – it’s so subtle some audience members might not even notice it yet wonder why the emotional dial has gone up several notches.
Overall, this is a King Lear that may disappoint those seeking epic tragedy but will ultimately appeal to audiences new to the play, fans of Menzies or those who prefer an interpersonal, domestic interpretation.
King Lear plays at the Neilson Nutshell, Sydney, until July 20 and Arts Centre Melbourne from July 25 to August 11.
This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on
June 29, 2024 as “Fools and madmen”.
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