beautiful, moving, glorious

August 1, 2003 performance reviewed by Frances Benn Hall (about Ms. Hall)

King Lear is one of Shakespeare’s most demanding and devastating plays—one so loaded with philosophical themes, tortured family relationships, magnificent poetry and complex characters that producing it (indeed attending a performance of it) can be a daunting experience.

Tina Packer’s production at Shakespeare and Co. is dynamic, multi-faceted, and engaging. As director, Packer has employed every aspect of the Founder’s thrust stage, and with a skillful cast of fourteen (six of whom double seamlessly in multiple roles) given us a Lear that is fast-paced, beautifully choreographed, movingly acted, and gloriously spoken.

The production is studded with an experienced company, mainly equity actors and long-standing members of Tina’s Shakespeare family, who are all in top form.

The setting is simple bamboo blinds, that under the shifting lighting effects can change color, can shimmer, can thrash in a storm, and can on the second balcony pour with rain. Designed by Kris Stone, this backdrop to the thrust stage provides all the scenery needed for the multiple scenes in the rapid-paced play.

The costumes, mainly white for the principles, are elegant and an ancient and “other-time” pagan and remote—a time that even Shakespeare teased us with-- letting The Fool tell us, “This prophecy Merlin shall make, for I live before his time.” The white theme for the court in the grand opening scene in which Lear divides his kingdom and banishes Cordelia and Kent moves with the flow of choreographed dance, patterned and paced.

Costume designer Arthur Oliver has served the play well; besides the white array of the court characters, he has been ingenious with the banished and disguised and humiliated.

Although characters double at times, the costume changes make us unaware of it

The music created and scored by Tanglewood Fellows weaves in and out, punctuating the action and thundering to a crescendo in the storm scene where it is accompanied by the most spectacular lighting effects in the play.

There are so many stellar performances in this Lear that it is difficult to limit the praise. John Douglas Thompson as Edmund is so agilely, delightfully and delightedly evil that he highlights every scene in which he appears. “Now, gods, stand up for bastards!” And his nonchalant wooing of the two sisters is masterly.

Jonathan Epstein adds Lear to his diadem of Shakespeare roles, playing the 80 year old king with vehement delivery in his angry lines and touching faltering pauses in his bewildered ones. He gives us a Lear who remains angry and defiant and physically robust until well into the play, even lifting and carrying the Fool. From his opening anger at Cordelia, "Nothing will come of nothing!" to his pity for Edgar, "Unacommodated man is no more but such a poor, bare forked animal as thou art." he grows as he diminishes. Finally in his own infirmity, too late, he can "see" in this play which among other things is about blindness and sight.

As Kent, Malcolm Ingram is magnificent. (He too could play Lear.) His every line, every gesture, is clear, distinct, and in character. In the stocks, where confined it would seem action is impossible, he is acting. Hi devotion to Lear and Cordelia is apparent at all times.

The Fool, (Kevin G. Coleman) whom all critics regret that Shakespeare dropped from the play too early, is present in this production in the opening scene in which he, as written by Shakespeare, has no part. He is above the stage, observing, worrying, rueing what goes on below him, but in character unobtrusive but there, never stealing stage. A fine directorial touch. His scenes with Lear are some of the most poignant in the play. All his lines hit the mark. Although a tall man, he agiley becomes the wise, child-like fool we love as Lear, too late, realizes he too loved and needed. He alone can chide Lear and get away with it.

As Regan and Goneril, Elizabeth Aspenleider and Ariel Bock (left and right, respectively, in photo) are not only the selfish, cruel, and demonic daughters of Lear, savagely cruel in treatment of the old men in the play, but so bawdily and erotically passionate in their lust for Edmund that they bring another dimension of evil into a play in which so much already exists. Both are competently detestable, although for me Aspenleider had a slight edge, and their final end, ironically coupled at last with Edmund is a deft Packer touch.

Cordelia, the loving daughter, has been given a lesser role by Shakespeare but Kristin Wold makes the most of it. She is valiant in her defiance of Lear and her sisters, accepts her rejection by Burgundy with grace, and when needed returns to try to save her father from his own self-willed destruction. Among the vehement other characters, she maintains her sweet demeanor and sweet voice - the voice that as he bends above her dying form Lear remembers, "Her voice was ever soft/Gentle and low/an excellent thing in woman."

Jason Asprey as Edgar handles the "poor Tom" scenes with skill and is especially effective in the final duel with Edmund in which both actors show great skill and brio. He also is poignant in the scenes with his father, Gloucester (Johnny Lee Davenport) who in this play, as he has done in so many others, gives a convincing character with whom we can identify. And in a small, but pivotal role, Mel Cobb shines as Oswald

Themes in this play are strong and tragic. It is a dark play and there can be no happy ending for anyone in it. As Gloucester, blinded and groping toward death can tell us, “As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods/ They kill us for their sport.” there is a hopelessness in the fatality, the sterility, the suffering, and the search for a meaning of life. There is a sad commentary on sight and blindness, on love and alienation, on madness on several levels, and on the sad relationships between parents and children

We can be awed by this play and in this production should be. Seeing it can be a rewarding experience.