National Theatre Live’s King Lear last Sunday afternoon was the first production of any kind I've seen. It confirmed my suspicion that this is the greatest tragedy of all literature.
I was weeping throughout.
Literary art, and great acting can make you care tremendously about a young girl in trouble with the law for burying her brother, or a young man unsure whether or not to avenge the murder of his father, but the circumstances that create Antigone and Hamlet are remote from most of our lives. Art is required to translate their quirkily specific dilemmas into something universally understandable. But in Lear the necessity for translation is minimal: the conflict is a conflict experienced by pretty much everyone: losing ones grip and/or dealing with someone who is losing their grip.
“Losing ones grip” sounds almost comical, but there could not be a more damning situation in the unforgiving world we have made for ourselves. To be weak is to be automatically not only irrelevant, but disgusting. Lear takes us on the journey from the first apprehension of decrepitude, through all the stages of embarrassment, shame, dehumanization, and on to death. And after death, there is no peace, to redemption, no reconciliation.
As the story is intensely and profoundly ordinary, the poetry—though there are astonishing flights—radiates out of an idiom of luminous plainness:
"O reason not the need"
“O, let me not be mad, sweet heaven!”
"I see it feelingly."
“Ripeness is all …"
“Never, never, never, never, never”.
Knowing him exclusively through reading, I’ve always thought that Lear’s Fool was one of Shakespeare’s supreme creations. However after this production I’m not so sure. Adrian Scarborough was admirable, and the Fool’s oracular lines were shattering. But I’m afraid the jokes fell flat. I don’t think it’s Scarborough’s fault. A Fool who only makes shatteringly profound remarks is not quite a proper Fool at all.
The Earl of Gloucester (Stephen Boxer) and his legitimate son Edgar (Tom Brooke) demonstrate the family trait of being simpletons. They’re even more annoying than Polonius and Laertes. It’s hard to fault Edmund (Sam Troughton) for tormenting them—they kind of deserve it. The beauty of this is that Gloucester evolves over the play from a ninny into a really grand and wise figure. When Edgar cries, "Alack, sir, you cannot see your way,” Gloucester replies, “I have no way and therefore want no eyes; / I stumbled when I saw."
Our Lear, Simon Russell Beale, is an unprepossessing figure. But he has the pipes: he made the lines sing. And what lines! But even better, he had the moves. He is a subtle and graceful artist with his body. The movements of his head, the trembling of his hands, his stooped gait, his pace …. He described a trajectory from the very first awareness of failure, to collapse and death. The art made it bearable.
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