Kings, Queens and Bastards

First play of the trip, Jacobi as Lear. Well that’s a good place to start.

The Donmar Warehouse premiered their production of King Lear late last year, went on tour with it and it did so well, they decided to revive it for one week only in Richmond. We all were reeling from the tube ride all the way to the theatre, wondering just what were in store for. And what a show it was. The whole stage was painted wood flats (yes they were real wood flats all across and up and down the stage, as far as I could tell). With a sort of pale grey and white combination it really gave a bleak feeling to everything even before the play began. The true magic of the set came during the storm scene, the overhead lights had slatted plates on them looking as if they were looking through wood, the storm raged and the lights flickered through the panels in the back of the stage as well. And yet even that wasn’t good enough, the final moment in the play, and it’s a tragedy so I really hope I’m not ruining it for anyone, Lear has just died, the last line spoken and the lights swelled slowly. The brighter they got the more the stage and the way it was painted made it look like Lear, Edgar, Cornwall, Cordelia, and  the attendants were glowing on stage. It really was something amazing to see.

So much can be said about the acting alone. Jacobi, of course, does such wonderful work with the words. It all seems so natural and it flows so nicely as it should I suppose if you’re a classically trained actor. But the amazing thing about his performance that I’ve never gotten out of Lear before was a line in which Goneril has and how it affected Jacobi’s performance. There is a line, “Old fools are babes again” (I.iii), it was then I realized that Lear was indeed getting more and more childish as the time progressed, going from a seemingly sane man and then reverting back to a childlike state as his mind begins to go. Thinking more on this, Lear has very childish qualities from the start. The whole idea of him wanting to find out who loves him the most is sort of something school children would say to their group of friends in order to get the chocolate milk: “Whoever likes me more gets the milk.” Then in the Duke of Albany’s palace, he whines for his fool. The idea of Lear losing his mind and then going back to that childlike state is probably something everyone whose done King Lear has tried but for some reason it was always lost on me including every time I’ve read it, the connection just wasn’t there, until now.

Enough about Jacobi, on to the others. Edmund has never been so manipulative in any performance I’ve seen. The actor playing him was not as attractive as Edgar giving substance to the fact that Edmund is the Bastard son and therefore not of the same quality of man that Edgar is. Add into general slow burn manipulative qualities and you get one bad guy. Edgar too was so good! Gloucester believes he has fallen off the cliffs at Dover, and Edgar rushes to his side after he has “fallen”. He pretends to be someone other than Poor Tom and adds a slight accent to indicate the fact that he is peasant. I’m not sure how profound or noticeable it was to everyone else, but for me it really worked.

The play was just fabulous. 

The night ended with my friend Christine and I finding ourselves in Piccadilly Circus and then ending up at Buckingham Palace just before midnight. It was beautiful and amazing as well as a surprisingly warm night.

Tomorrow: Scavenger Hunt.