Directed by Peter Evans, Bell Shakpespeare’s King Lear leans into a minimalist conception of the tragedy. Sacrificing some of the historical concerns to highlight the relationships between the characters on stage, what emerges is a production dominated by powerful performances and familial themes that strike a deeper cord with modern audiences.
The show was in the round, performed on a circular stage to audience members on all sides. Actors were always proximate to the crowd who often walked within inches of you — at one point, an eyeless Earl of Gloucester (James Lugton) stared directly at me from above. Beyond stools, swords, and the occasional map, the set was sparse. The show relied a lot more on blocking; centring characters who have power and physically sidelining ones with lower status, with some sometimes sitting on the stars next to the audience.
The costuming was even more bare with all actors — with few exceptions — wearing black formal wear. This allows for an interesting critique of the aesthetic of kingship. King Lear (Robert Menzies) appears in a crown and cap in the first scene before symbolically shedding his garments when handing power over to his daughters. The ruler is reduced to rags by the end of the show. The sacrifice is losing the heraldry of kingship. Great entourages that are stripped from Lear and the battles fought for the nation fade behind the family. Evan’s approach is to centre the political on the personal.
Menzies’s performance is a brilliant and visceral depiction of the tragic hero. The frailty of Lear is captured acutely with a hunched posture and shaking hands. Straight backed nobles like Gloucester and the Earl of Kent (Janine Watson), who often get colourful tunics, look kinglier. It’s unclear, as a modern audience, how much we are meant to sympathise with the ailing King. At points the power Menzies’s voice commands as he berates his daughters makes him come off as a bully, however the shock and pity we feel for his decline is equally present. One member of the audience sitting next to me analogised his experience of being stripped of his fortune to elder abuse in the Australian aged care sector.
Evans points out that Lear’s fall into madness comes with “beautiful moments of humility and clarity, and much of the play’s poignancy.” The mad King is hilarious when he believes the issues of Poor Tom (Alex King) must be caused by fictitious daughters and bleak when he cries over the body of Cordelia (Melissa Kahraman).
Kahraman plays both the King’s banished daughter and the court’s Fool, the only two characters who openly question and defy Lear. Cordelia’s character does not shine through, though this is the fault of a script that takes her character out of the play’s action until the end. The Fool, on the other hand, was a delightful comedic figure, expertly controlling irony and timing. The role of the fool in Shakespeare’s context, to say what the rest of the court could not, stands the test of time.
Like all Shakespearean tragedies, the end was a stage of bodies. By decentring the history, Evans spotlights the often arbitrary nature of succession and kingship. As Gloucester laments, “as flies to wanton boys are we to the gods; They kill us for their sport.” His bastard son Edmond (Darius Williams), often described as an Iago figure, attempts to beat that fate, but ends up like the rest.
King Lear is playing at The Neilson Nutshell from June 20- July 20 and then at the Arts Centre Melbourne from July 26- August 11
