Theatre
Fool's Day
Mark Amory
King Lear (Stratford) Lear (The Other Place) At the interval after two hours of King Lear I had not suffered a dull moment and after a further hour and a half that record was scarcely marred. This may sound like pathetically faint praise for the best production I have seen of a great play but it is quite a feat. Lear does present pro- blems in performance. Macbeth is a tense thriller, Hamlet flashes with charm and wit, Othello 'in spite of the subplot' is fuelled with passion and poetry; but there is a serious risk that when the deranged King, his Fool and Poor Tom begin to totter 'He's been like that ever since someone told him he was aerodynamically unsound.' about in rags shouting gnomic wisdom against the storm and you know they will keep it up for some time, the mind may wander, even the eyelid droop. To say that a play is better read than seen is to say it has failed as a play, but I never felt philistine thinking this of Lear till now. Adrian No- ble's first productidn here grips from the outset. Visual excitement such as Lear and his Fool swinging aloft amongst the clouds (dry ice well-used for- once) or Poor Tom erupting violently through the stage is bound into the whole so that you feel you have come closer to the play rather than ad- miring moments or fine performances though there are those too. The problem of the opening is not entirely solved. Though death duties laws caused the situation to be much repeated in recent years, Lear han- ding over his estates is odd, his harsh treat- ment of Cordelia and, to an even greater degree, of Kent must jar. Here the demands for expressions of love 'are made and answered formally; Goneril's face when Cordelia fails to play along showed concern over a spot of domestic bother that could be put right tomorrow or next week. Even so, like Gloucester's credulity, it all feels like a device to get the play going.
With the entry of Antony Sher as the Fool'it takes off. He has shrunk a foot, ac- quired a limp, a false red nose, a white face, baggy trousers, a bowler hat and Max Wall boots to become a kaleidoscope of clowns reminiscent of the circus, Beckett's tramps, Chaplin, Rigoletto and, I rather think, Grock. The speed and invention of his changes of mood were such that I did not dare make notes for fear of missing something. Michael Gambon's Lear can be persuaded to join in a music hall routine for a moment, which is daring in a figure who must retain pathetic dignity. This is an unselfish, unshowy performance which, in spite of vocal and physical strength, does not dominate so much as support the com- pany and become the basis of their success. There is no ranting and perhaps the last great speech with the dead Cordelia has been spoken more movingly, but the violent impulses and the growing humanity are ut- terly convincing and there are touching moments, as when he paddles in the (redemptive?) water, a foolish, fond old man indeed.
The RSC has invited the comparison of Bond with Shakespeare (as does Bond himself with his title) but I think most will duck it and be right to. Bond's Lear is a play that came out of his thinking about Shakespeare's rather than a version of the story. Apart from the central autocrat, who loses power to his daughters, suffers and learns, the plots are different. Bond creates strong images in strong prose, at its best when most simple and least self-conscious. His characters are defined by their social behaviour and reflect the conscious thoughts of the author on such abstractions as power, freedom and violence. The play starts with the body of a dead man lying by the great wall Lear is building. It ends with the body of Lear himself at the foot of the
same wall, shot while attempting to tear it down. He set out to be a good, if ruthless,conservative king, defending his people. Deposed by his daughters, he wanders and meets with better weather than in Shakespeare; but civil war is more in evidence, soldiers constantly arriving to rape and arrest.
The daughters are comic grotesques: when the younger is screaming that she wishes to jump on the lungs of old acquain- tance, her sister comments that she has always been like that, even at school. Then she slides forth her knitting needles and punctures his eardrums.. The violence is continual and appalling. When I saw the 1971 production I had to escort my compa- nion out during the eye removal scene and we passed a quicker girl with her head bet- ween her legs on the steps of the Royal Court. Sara Kestelman (icily effective in both plays) manages to return from such extremes and almost win sympathy when worn down by the demands of power. Cor- delia, no sister, is a rebel leader, forced also to be cruel but looking to the day when it will no longer be necessary. She is explicitly compared to Stalin in Bond's notes. Alice Krige is simply too soft and pretty to be true; when she rubs dirt on her face it is like Sophia Loren playing a cowboy, charming,not convincing. But it is another performance of extraordinary sweetness that betrays Bond's intentions. When Lear goes to the country he finds a boy who, as played by Mark Rylance, is so kind and gentle amid the oppressive grey scenes, col- oured only by splashes of blood, that it seems his country life must be presented as an ideal. Increasingly ignored, he is even- tually killed by pigs, but his ghost stays with Lear, who loves him — a parallel to the Fool. All this was mysterious to me but I read that he represents a sentimental idyll that Lear must put aside. Where Shakespeare deals with humanity, Bond is concerned with society and the play, though not dated in a bad sense, is already recognisably of its time; but I hope I have conveyed that its importance is equal to its scale (three and a quarter hours, 70 speak- ing parts) and its seriousness.
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