FringeReview UK 2024

King Lear

Almeida Theatre

Genre: Classical and Shakespeare, Contemporary, Drama, Live Music, Mainstream Theatre, Theatre, Tragedy

Venue: Almeida Theatre

Festival: FringeReview UK

Low Down

Review

What is it with the Almeida and pianos? The quite frequent appearance of one on stage promises something special. This production of King Lear directed by Yael Farber playing till March 30^th, features one the Gloucester family have – you could say – a special relationship with.

That’s through the yellow-grained fug and steeps of air lit by Lee Curran that mark this as a Farber production, in this case an atmospheric descent into mines of sulphur. And there’s a crucial tonal difference with the Lear family.

Returning from world-tripping, rucksacked Edmund (charismatic Fra Fee) first serenades his brother Edgar (initially diffident Matthew Tennyson) on it just before betraying him. Later he seduces Regan (Faith Omole), both times playing and singing Bob Dylan, itself threaded through Max Perryment’s music and Peter Rice’s ominous rasps and deep-mine clangour.

And Dylan erupts at the end in Merle Hensel’s grey-scaled ashen heath of a set. There’s two violins played too, which rich as they are, don’t add to the storm scene.

Then Edgar leads their father Gloucester (in Michael Gould’s touching we-have-seen-the-best-of-our-time fragility) to the top of it, where it functions as the faux-cliff. Motifs of harmony, discord, statecraft and flattery suggest themselves as tamers of furies. Unlike the royal family or other Dukes, all naturally militant, the times allow – or force – both sons to the sword.

That’s certainly the martial power Lear (Danny Sapani) exudes in a Succession-like opening where Sapani’s dangerous volatility is capable of trashing mic stands and conferences in the deposition scene. He’s significantly clearing realist clutter for mythic space. And his rule is absolute: he moves his daughters like frozen pawns, their statements publicly enforced.

In it too you see the coiled strength of Cordelia (Gloria Obianyo, ferocity initially inward) that marks her out as her father’s equally headstrong daughter, refusing compromise and embracing a terrible purity. Her “love and be silent” falls like a military command to herself.

By contrast her silken-robed sisters – Goneril (Akiya Henry) and Omole’s smooth Regan – reveal their serpents’-teeth by degrees; you feel they’re pushed to it. Whether in her treatment of Oswald (Hugh Bolton, all foppish hauteur) or Albany (Geoffrey Lumb, unwinding from milk-and-water to reciprocal violence) Henry displays scorn and flashes of anger as her predominant star.

Conversely Omole’s particularly amorous with Cornwall (a darkly attractive sadist in Hugh Davis’ hands) just after the blinding scene, dextrously moved past the storm. By then Cornwall’s beyond sex.

It’s Fee’s charismatic Edmund – visibly smarting from Gloucester’s embarrassment at his return – who brings pianistic Orphism to both sisters. Vibrant, stripped to the waist, arms round his brother, this Edmund’s sexy as hell: and vocally soars above everyone else; even the two sisters. The bastard’s standing up for them, and they’re smitten in explicit scenes where Oswald’s often comically embarrassed, and Goneril not even by her husband’s arrival.

It’s at that point pummelled Albany turns, in Lumb’s meticulously-prepared ascent to responsibility: but it’s through the ferocity of exchanging blow for blow. As for his manhood, phew. It’s not pretty or virtuous, but explicable.

In this production too, you feel for the elder sisters, their wrongs often given short shrift. Particularly in the insufferable riots of Lear’s knights (Oliver Cubill as Burgundy and Curan, Steffan Rizzi as France and brutish guises, even as Cornwall’s reluctant killer dispatched by Regan). Cruelty’s incremental, not inevitable. Lear to an extent earns it, binding all on a wheel of fire.

Omole, both newly-available and more amorous, might seem more sympathetic: but one remembers her treatment of Sapani (alongside Henry’s Goneril), and earlier Cordelia (the two sisters initially comfort her on banishment, are then outraged by her words). Desire to possess Edmund perhaps marks this Regan as different from Henry’s covetous lust and frustration with Albany.

Having poisoned Regan, Goneril cradles her, seems to poison herself. Edgar cradles Edmund, who literally crawls to complete his own “all three now marry in an instant” in a pyramid of consummation. There’s perverted as well as true familial tenderness running through both families.

Kent (Alec Newman) like Edmund long away from court, acts peregrine to all its lunar eclipses. Newman’s commanding rasp and rough clearly marks him as an allowed Duke much like the allowed Fool. And his own “nothing” out of service echoing Cordelia, seems existential, dog-like.

Here you feel Kent’s treatment of Oswald unjust, his aggression born of pained loyalty and though clear-headed and scheming with best intent, not objective. There’s truth in Regan’s sentiment that Kent delights in impolitic gesture.

It’s the Fool here (Clarke Peters) that lends this Lear’s interiority flickers of life. A Fool as old, or older, he’s as regal as Sapani is all burl and barrel; calm, Zen-like, teasing where Sapani’s ire is bullish. Yet Sapani allows him near like no-one else till the storm sequence.

Peters makes of Fool an inward, inverse Lear. When he proclaims “This prophecy Merlin shall make, for I live before his time“ you see Peters’ – and Farber’s – Fool in an instant. An ancestor perhaps. You’re not surprised when instead of some lurid or ambiguous end he simply walks slowly off: as if Farber treats his state as kingly; and brings him back. And though lines linking Fool and Cordelia are cut, there’s kinship still.

Till Act III Kear’s rage predominates – not incipient dementia but a man but ever slightly knowing himself or anyone else. Farber patiently unravels the whole act, Bench scene included, with spectral sisters apparating, to show Tennyson’s self-shrinkage, Sapani’s stripping to empathy.

It’s not however an enfeebled Lear yet. So there’s fresh gains in such convincing gradualism, some loss of pathos. Sapani’s not reduced by the elements, however he writhes.

Obianyo’s appearance changes that. Rippling in military apparel this Cordelia rasps command, absorbs her father’s strength. It’s only now in the recuperation scene we see a convincingly fragile Lear, waking from his wheel of fire in almost the most touching moment of this production, where both drop their shields.

Sapani though saves the best of himself till last. That’s after Tennyson’s heralded appearance – not trumpeted despite Albany’s claim. Edgar’s newly emboldened but not magically transformed from empath to psychopath, militarily reluctant. Tennyson’s scenes with Gould’s Gloucester – someone who treats history as home – allows Edgar to absorb resolve, if not strength. Like Cordelia with Lear.

Edgar still hates killing, as he cradles his brother. It’s through this refracted battle-smoke Sapani centres grief. Farber, allowing the Fool a revenant visit, makes one more decision in an otherwise faithful, detailed end.

Does it pull focus? I’m not sure. Farber’s smouldering production – fast-talking or timeless – fully engages with the play. Her vision’s complete: patient, toxic-laden atmospherics – so characteristic, sometimes etiolated – find a perfect analogue in Lear some recent productions miss.

There’s little modish cutting, though felicitous running of scenes in parallel – essential in three-and-a-half hours. It makes almost perfect sense: and two families’ DNA ring true as rarely before.

Published February 16, 2024February 16, 2024 by Simon Jenner