KING LEAR

KING LEAR

Chichester Festival Theatre at the Minerva

28.09.2017

A visceral, intimate Lear: a unique staging with McKellen's tragic king at its centre, and the audience on the edge of the torrential storm.

As director Jonathan Munby has it, this is conversation, not declaration, in the shared air of a room.

It's set in Britain, in a recognisable land, at a time which still feels like the familiar recent past. It opens with pomp and circumstance, a Latin anthem, and speeches from a dais with microphones. A formal Lear divides his kingdom by taking a pair of scissors to a map. The daughters make their pitch, and in the first sign of his true affections, the king sketches a couple of dance steps with her as he helps Cordelia to the lectern.

But there are signs of the dementia to come, a moment of temper brandishing a chair.

There are many such dramatic outbursts: Lear's knights – got up as hooray henrys or Young Farmers – and the volleys of bread at the feast, the suspended cage for the stocks, the stark abattoir for the blinding, and the Fool confronting Edmund to end Part One. And much later, Goneril, like the ghost of Hamlet's father, walking along the wall of Dover chalk at the back of the stage.

McKellen is magnificent. Not only as the ailing, failing King, feeble in mind and body, but also in the stronger man, fighting his own battles almost to the end, doggedly carrying the body of Cordelia slung across his back. To see him rage against the storm, or realise the perfidy of his flinty-hearted daughters, at such close quarters is an unforgettable theatrical experience.

He heads an impressive cast. His fool is Phil Daniels, a comedian with comedy glasses and a banjolele; imagined here as a kind of aide-de-camp, he is perhaps most at ease in the earlier scenes.

The scene with Gloucester, movingly done by Danny Webb, has echoes of Godot as the two old men sit and talk – later there’s even a leafless tree …

Webb is especially strong in his scenes with Jonathan Bailey as Edgar [aka Poor Tom], the other wronged child in this tragedy – his madness never overplayed, his empathy with Cordelia helping to meld together these two parallel plotlines.

This production has much in common with Nancy Meckler’s version running concurrently at Shakespeare’s Globe – the contemporary parallels, and especially an outstanding Countess of Kent – at Chichester it is Sinead Cusack, excellent both as courtier and as Caius, disguised in exile.

Kirsty Bushell’s Regan is brutally sensual, gleefully relishing the blinding of Gloucester (in the abattoir, with a meat hook); Dervla Kirwan’s changing moods as Goneril make her the more interesting of the sinister sisters, while Tamara Lawrance’s youthful Cordelia has a strong, sympathetic presence. Damien Molloy is a striking Edmund, while among the lesser characters I especially enjoyed Michael Matus as a pompous footman, casually combing his brilliantined hair.

A privilege to see this great Shakespearean at the height of his powers – and, at 78, still carrying his Cordelia, and getting drenched to the skin every night. A privilege to share his air, and the relentless torrential rain of the storm …