The Stage

King Lear

Published Thursday 29 November 2007 at 15:15 by Gerald Berkowitz

The RSC King Lear starts off unpromisingly, with an interpolated grand procession in Ruritanian costume to loud organ music.

It quickly settles down, however, to a rather conventional, almost textbook reading of the play. The love test is a scripted charade, and Romola Garai’s Cordelia is startled that her impulsive and half-joking ad libs so enrage the king. The elder sisters are familiar characterisations, Frances Barber’s imperious and oily Goneril balanced by Monica Dolan’s more impulsive and here hard-drinking Regan.

Jonathan Hyde’s Kent is angular and forceful, driven by the conviction of his righteousness, Sylvester McCoy’s Fool is the by now standard half-weeping older man, and William Gaunt supplies almost the only real warmth and humanity in the play as Gloucester. Philip Winchester has to fight the temptation to twirl his mustachios in melodramatic villainy as Edmund, though Ben Meyjes does show Edgar growing from shallow bookworm to strong and feeling hero through his ordeal.

At the centre, Ian McKellen walks through the first half of the play, bringing little to the table. His characterisation deepens after the storm scene, showing a mind and heart in Lear that utilise madness as a learning experience to come out with greater wisdom and modesty.

Dover beach, the awakening, the off-to-prison speech and the final scene are as moving as anyone could wish, though always wholly within the bounds of previous productions and interpretations, and repeatedly giving the sense that, at their best, director Trevor Nunn and his actors have stayed out of the way of the play’s inherent power rather than adding much to it.