Theater Review: King Lear

It’s a mad, mad world at the Cort Theatre: a kingdom’s descent into disunity mirrors a king’s descent into madness in a new production of King Lear. Directed by Sam Gold and starring the thunderous Glenda Jackson in the titular role, this dynamic, if uneven, production is elevated by powerful performances.

First performed in 1606, King Lear is one of William Shakespeare’s most enduring tragedies. The play begins as the eponymous, elderly ruler decides to divvy up his kingdom between his three daughters Goneril (Elizabeth Marvel), Regan (Aisling O’Sullivan), and Cordelia (Ruth Wilson). But there’s a catch: Lear proclaims that the better the daughters proclaim their love for their father, the better the cut of land they’ll get. Lear’s scheme takes an unexpected turn when his favorite daughter Cordelia – who loves him with simple, filial grace – refuses to flatter him. Wounded, he disinherits Cordelia and casts her from the kingdom. His extreme behavior to his beloved Cordelia, many fear, evidences his mental decline, and Lear is presumed to be descending into madness. His remaining daughters and their associates plot Lear’s demise, tearing apart both the kingdom and natural bonds of familial attachment in the process.

A disunited world, a leader with a questionable mental state – it’s hard not to draw connections between this production and the current political climate on both sides of the Atlantic, from Trumpian politics in a starkly divided America to the clamorous chaos of Brexit in the ostensibly United Kingdom. But though these parallels can be made, Gold does not dwell on them; Lear remains a timeless study of a mind, family, state, and world in decline.

A long line of theater greats – from John Gielgud to Laurence Olivier – have tackled the role of the octogenarian king. Now Glenda Jackson – an Oscar-winning, RADA-trained actress who famously portrayed the English queen Elizabeth I in different contexts – dons the mantle to play the seemingly mad king. Jackson is a legend on and off the stage: she vacated her illustrious acting career in 1992 to become a Member of Parliament until 2015. With her bonafide political credentials, Glenda Jackson is perhaps better suited to play Lear than any actor before her. Indeed, Jackson delivers a virtuoso performance. She sinks her teeth into the role with gusto and is the gravitational center of every scene she’s in: Jackson doesn’t just act; she commands. Her Lear is both frail and formidable, a booming bellow raging into a storm.

Jayne Houdyshell & Glenda Jackson; Photo credit: Brigitte Lacombe

Ruth Wilson brilliantly displays her range and depth as an actor by taking on two roles: she plays both Cordelia and the Fool, a casting decision that highlights intriguing connections between the two characters. Though there isn’t much to Cordelia’s role, Wilson makes the most of it and infuses the character with clarity, intelligence, skepticism, and a sense that she is more than the passive innocent that most productions imagine Cordelia to be. Wilson’s cockney-accented Fool is wildly good, and she expertly holds her own against Jackson in every scene they share.

But a good production should be more than stellar performances. Immediately after opening, critics largely faulted this production for being what they considered to be too messy. (They even all used similar words to make this critique, as if they had compared notes before writing their reviews.) They claimed the production didn’t have a unifying principle, a flaw that evidenced Sam Gold’s lack of direction and the disparate styles of performance.

These critiques miss the point entirely. Yes, the performances were disparate – but this form had a function. The disparate nature of the performances underscores the discord, factionalism, and everyone-is-in-it-for-themselves ethos that ultimately tears apart the kingdom. Lear’s madness both stems from and ignites this wild, imbalanced disunity. Stylistically, Glenda Jackson’s commanding Lear rightly stands apart and highlights one of the many partitions that divide the kingdom: generational divisions. From her richly rolled – and roared – Rs to her old-school British thespian performance style, Jackson’s powerful Lear contrasts with the various theatrical styles surrounding her, such as the Vaudevillian mischief of Ruth Wilson’s Fool, the contemporary feel of Sean Carvajal’s Edgar, and the oratorical acrobatics of Pedro Pascal‘s Edmund. Each performance – and each character – stands alone, disconnected from one another in this crumbling kingdom.

There was no greater metaphor for individual insularity than the reimagined Duke of Cornwall (Russell Harvard), portrayed here as a deaf nobleman who relies on an interpreter (Michael Arden, who recently directed the Tony-winning revival of Once on This Island) to communicate the slippery machinations of the world around him. The presence of a deaf character suggests difficulties of communication and, with it, connection. Every character in this production seems to exist as their own island, nurturing an agenda that is sometimes at odds with those around them.

But though Gold’s directing was interesting at times, some scenes worked better than others. The Earl of Gloucester’s (Jayne Houdyshell) blinding is brilliantly executed – it was so blood-curdling that I had to look away. At the other end of the spectrum, Cordelia’s death scene is legitimately moving. But other scenes are less successful. Though the famous storm scene is initially interesting and inventive, the novelty of the experience quickly wears off. This is partly because Sean Carvajal’s Edgar/Poor Tom is simply not compelling enough to match Jackson’s towering Lear, Wilson’s nuanced Fool, or John Douglas Thompson’s Earl of Kent.

Many critics have also lamented that Philip Glass’s hauntingly lovely score – commissioned especially for this production – is misplaced and ill-used. It is too often at odds with the play, they complain, and it threatens to compete with Shakespeare’s brilliant dialogue. I didn’t have a problem with it. Like the dissonance in the performance style, the dissonance between music and text further reinforces the theme of a disunited, disparate world.

Though Sam Gold’s production isn’t perfect, it is bold and daring. More than anything else, the performances – especially those from Glenda Jackson and Ruth Wilson – hold the center in a chaotic world.

Photo Credit: Brigitte Lacombe