 | King Lear |  |
"How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is
To have a thankless child!" Act I, scene iv
Written: 1605
Goodman Theatre ; September 19, 2006 Chicago, Illinois
Director : Robert Falls ; Starring : Jonno Roberts, Laura Odeh, Kate Arrington, Kim Martin-Cotton, Stacy Keach
Reviewed on : 2006-09-20 13:09:00 ; Reviewed by : Margarete Mandry
| Stacy Keach proves once and for all that screen actors can indeed do stage work. He provides us with an astonishing King Lear, whose vitality turns to madness in the face of the treachery of his two rapacious daughters. Here is a foolish, complacent, self-indulgent and harsh father who is in no way prepared for the cruelty of real life without the patronage of a multitude of servants. Keach effortlessly leads the audience through Lear’s complacency, his anger, his madness and finally, his despair. His hilarious turn as Lear-the-homeless-man and Lear-the-naked-dancer lightened the mood in this dark play, allowing the audience to catch its breath before the next onslaught.
His eldest daughter, Goneril, is a controlling termagant whose thirst for power is eclipsed only by the plotting of Edmund. Kim Martin-Cotton does a great job of portraying how an elder daughter, deprived of rule because her elderly father still lives, becomes more cruel as her ambition curdles into hatred and jealousy. Instead of allowing her father to enjoy his retirement in luxury, she uses all her wiles to drive him out and hasten his, in her mind, long overdue death.
Kate Arrington’s Regan is, by contrast, a middle daughter who coasts through life in luxury. She has chosen as her mate a violent youth whose thirst for violence has awoken some seedy need in her. She is the Bonnie to his Clyde, as they are equally matched in their glee when torturing Gloucester. She is the loud, brash, stupid sister, who has depended on her looks and money to get what she wants, without any thought to the consequences. It has never occurred to her that a reckoning will come and that, in siding with her sister Goneril to drive out her father, she trusts that that same sister will never turn on her.
While the two elder sisters are equal in their greed and ambition, there is another daughter: the youngest. Cordelia, portrayed by Laura Odeh, is the only one who truly loves her father and would take him in when the others did not. However, she does not relish fake flattery and so her father, thinking himself well loved by all his family, takes against her and banishes her from the kingdom for not flattering him sufficiently as he divides his kingdom between his offspring. Although a small role, Cordelia’s is the catalyst to the action and she is constantly present as a mute comparison to the evil her sisters so readily embrace.
The prime mover of the action and the character that prods events when they seem to slow down is Edmund, played by Jonno Roberts. Edmund is an illegitimate son (but the elder son) who chafes at not being first in line to inherit. Much like Don John in Much Ado About Nothing, he is intensely jealous of his brother Edgar and believes his chance birth has cheated him out of everything he deserves. Being a resourceful fellow, he plots and counterplots to arrange things to his satisfaction, never giving a moment’s thought to the wreckage his actions incur.
Robert Falls chose to set the play in the present, reminiscent of some Balkan state where the ruling family is akin to the mafia, armed guards are everywhere and war is imminent. Although originally set in Britain at war with France, this setting seems more understandable to the modern viewer who as heard all about wartime atrocities and family squabbles plunging the populace into war. In this case, the story is borne out by history, in which family struggles about succession often ended in civil war, the ruling family neither knowing nor caring that their subjects would suffer the most. The corpses brought out and thrown into mass graves during the war with France in this play are eerily familiar sights. Although one could say that the “montages” (the aforementioned war scene, the kitchen scene with Regan & Cornwall) go on too long for a stage production, they do serve to place the action in context for the viewer.
The choice to tie violence into sex is also an interesting one. There may be one too many simulated sex scenes, which do absolutely nothing to further the action or explain the characters, but a director chooses how to portray his viewpoint to the audience. This is apparently Mr. Falls’ view: that violence and sex are inextricably linked and there can be no tender love scene in King Lear. That Goneril is rapacious is evident, but her hunger is for power rather than sex. Likewise, Regan’s impetus seems to be comfort; if she needs sex to get it, then so be it. However, she chose a mate to provide her with everything, so sex is secondary and only something she uses when wheedling fails. Edmund uses sex as just another tool to power. He strings along both sisters but knows full well that they think their bodies will suffice. He is not deluded, and in the end, he is killed by Edgar, while the sisters die because of sexual jealousy. Cordelia, the pure and faithful daughter, is then raped in prison before being killed. I’m not sure this is absolutely necessary, since her death should be tragic enough. However, having set up the theory of sex as weapon, this egregious act pummels the viewer into submission with its horror.
Although the Goodman does not often do Shakespeare, this is definitely a production worth seeing as it is quite different from the usual treatment.
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Sir John Gilbert, R.A.,
Lear and the Fool
Reviews
|  | Royal Shakespeare Company
March 4, 2010 |  | Everyman Theatre
July 22, 2009 |  | Theatre Project Si
November 13, 2008 |  | A Young Vic/Headlong Theatre/Liverpool Everyman and Playhouse co-production
November 5, 2008 | | Shakespeare’s Globe
June 1, 2008 |  | Royal Shakespeare Company
December 5, 2007 |  | Stratford Festival of Canada
August 4, 2007 |  | Goodman Theatre
September 19, 2006 |  | Marin Shakespeare Company
July 8, 2006 |  | Shotgun Players
May 13, 2006 |  | Actors' Shakespeare Project
October 1, 2005 |  | Piven Theatre Workshop
2001 |  | Chicago Shakespeare Theatre
2001 |  | AUN Company
2000 |  | Ninagawa Company/RSC
1999 |
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